Nature Restoration Fund: interim evaluation

Annex 3: Clarifications and terminology used throughout this report

Activities: Actions or processes carried out to achieve the programme’s goals. For the NRF, these include raising awareness of the NRF funding opportunities among potential applicants, that funding applications are made, and that funding is allocated in line with NRF criteria.

Outputs: Immediate results of activities, often tangible and measurable and indicate what was produced or achieved. For the NRF, this is the establishment and delivery of new NRF projects. Each individual NRF project has its own aims, objectives, expected project outputs and outcomes.

Outcomes: Short to long term effects resulting from the outputs. The NRF has eight programme outcomes, which link to five long term outcomes, which support two of the priority outcomes in the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy 2022-2045.

Milestones: Types of activities and outputs delivered by Competitive Fund strand projects and reported via a NatureScot template as part of grant management processes, e.g. trees planted, hectares restored, etc. Bespoke milestones were also able to be created for individual projects where planned outputs or activities were not covered by a selectable one.

Metrics: Key performance indicators (statistics, units, and scales) by which to measure impact of projects (both strands) and linked to the eight programme outcomes of the NRF in the Scottish Government evaluation framework. Metrics are used to evaluate the delivery of the NRF overall and are used throughout the Results section.

Area supported: An aggregated metric which provides a catch-all across different milestones (e.g., “Area (ha) improved”, “Area (ha) of habitat created”, “Area (ha) of habitat managed”, etc.) (both strands). Area supported is shorthand for the area that the project worked over, in a broad sense, not an indication of the size and scale of the work, necessarily. For example, some projects excluded deer from a large area (Black Hills Regeneration Project, Knoydart, Highland) or eradicated INNS from a whole island (Outer Hebrides – see 4.1.1 Area (ha) where project activities have been undertaken). Projects such as these may not have involved intensive works across the full area supported but still have impacts and outcomes for habitats and species across that area. This aggregated metric is therefore used to understand the scale of NRF impacts. Necessary caveats are included throughout the Results section.

Funding: Under the Competitive Fund strand, projects record funding “offered” and funding “paid”. Under Edinburgh Process, local councils report funding “received”, and project “spend”.

Funding offered: refers to the amount of funding within a formal grant offer from NatureScot at the start of the project. NatureScot offers funding, based on a careful assessment of the application. Funding offered may increase during the project.

Funding received: refers to the amount of funding that was paid to projects up to 31 March 2024. “Funding received” can vary from the “Funding offered”, due to changes that often take place during a project’s lifetime. Local authorities receive Edinburgh Process strand funds directly from Scottish Government.

The Results section gives priority to “funding received” because this is the measure for which the evaluation team had the most complete data across both strands regarding funding deployed for nature restoration.