1. Financial overview and statement

Financial overview

Each year, we support our expenditure with four main sources of funds:

• National Park Grant from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural

Affairs (Defra) • Other government grants where available • Income generation from sales and charges for our services • Additional funds from grant bodies, partnerships, and donations.

During the financial year, we allocate expenditure to eight functional headings in accordance with Defra’s Grant Funding Agreement, as shown in the following overall financial statement. The financial information covers four years:

• Resources used in 2019/20 and 2020/21 • Our budgeted expenditure and income for 2021/22 and 2022/23. Defra have confirmed our allocation of National Park Grant for 2021/22 and there has been no inflation increase for the second year in a row, which means the National Park Grant has been at the same level for three years now. This represents a real terms cut in resources; however, the Authority has been proactive in making savings for the 2021/22 budget and work is continuing to present a balanced budget for 2022/23.

We continue to be prudent in our approach to financing capital expenditure from our borrowing powers, setting an overall borrowing limit of £3m up to 2023/24. This limit allows some headroom for capital investments in assets that may be able to generate continuing revenue income to support our purposes. We have an approved capital strategy and programme, which assesses our need for capital expenditure on assets, informed by our work on the Asset Management Plan and our need to ensure that the Authority’s asset base is financially sustainable. The availability of borrowing enables us to manage our long term assets more cost effectively, based on the principles of sound investment, rather than the in-year constraints caused by financing capital wholly from the revenue budget. The Capital Programme allows for potential investments of up to £3.6m financed by new borrowing of £2.5m and disposal receipts of £1.1m.

Overall Financial Statement

Expenditure £,000 2019/20 outturn

2020/21 (previous year)

2021/22 (current year)

2022/23 (future year)

Conservation of the Natural Environment 7,196 Conservation of the Cultural Heritage Recreation Mgt & Transport Promoting Understanding Rangers Estates and Volunteers Development Planning Forward Planning Corporate Mgt & Support Services 323 1,609 1,505 1,697 1,007 795

3,009 7,034 286 1,317 1,165 1,575 826 693

2,818 6,363 301 913 1,484 1,507 1,013 600

3,298 6,395 305 920 1,490 1,515 1,020 605

3,315

Total Gross Expenditure

Income – sales fees and charges Income – grants

Total Net Expenditure

Capital adjustment

Funding Requirement

Funded by:Baseline National Park Grant (NPG) Local Authority Levy Net Interest Use of Reserves – (to) from

17,141 15,714 15,479 15,565

(2,309) (1,795) (2,392) (2,405)

(6,237) (6,541) (5,430)

(5,460)

8,595 7,378 7,657 7,700

(1,866) (932) (876) (880)

6,729 6,446 6,781 6,820

6,699 0 70 (40) 6,699 0 25 (278) 6,699 0 25 575 6,699 0 10 400

Capital Expenditure 674 1,019 1,204 1,015

Notes to the Statement

1. The Authority sets a budget in February for the financial year April to March, and reports outturns in the following May at the Authority

Meeting; variances from approved budgets are identified in this report. Full committee papers can be found under the relevant month on our website, together with a complete set of the Authority’s latest audited accounts.

2. The capital adjustment reverses depreciation, impairments and accrued pension and staff costs and adds back actual expenditure on financing capital assets, in order to arrive at the funding requirement for the year.