While Highlands and Islands Enterprise announced last week that the funicular railway would be closed for the rest of the snowsport season on safety grounds, they have kept secret the three Improvement Notices served by the Health and Safety Executive in early December (see right above).   While HIE has been keen to demonstrate that it takes safety issues relating to the funicular seriously, it has been far less interested in tackling safety issues relating to the rest of the lift infrastructure – except where this suits its own agenda – despite repeated warnings.  The Improvement Notices would appear to provide further evidence of this.  This post takes a look at the issues.

The Funicular Railway on CairnGorm Mountain has now been completely closed for almost 4 months. Back on 4 October 2018 HIE had this to say:

‘’The present closure relates to safety concerns that obviously need to be investigated thoroughly’’

Nobody could disagree with that because the safety of the public is of prime concern and no risks can ever be taken in that respect.  What’s of note is that the engineers report has taken so long and when eventually received HIE responded by stating that internal discussions are underway to allow HIE to understand the problem[s] and plan the solution[s].  Then, despite not having explained what the problem is, HIE then announced the funicular will not operate for the duration of the snowsports season.  

How then has HIE reacted to other H&S situations on the mountain?

 

Health and Safety in Coire na Ciste

In August of 2017 HIE initiated the destruction of the Coire na Ciste and West Wall Chairlifts on the basis that they had a consultants’ report that condemned the lifts. They claimed that the Chairlifts were unsafe, that the safety of the public was their prime concern  and that the lifts had to be demolished at pace. The CEO, Charlotte Wright, was quoted as follows:

‘’The prime reason for our actions was related to Health and Safety. We’ve undertaken an engineers report and it was quite clear from that that there was a danger there, and that’s a primary cause for our actions…to remove a health and safety issue from the mountain’’

At face value that seems reasonable enough, until you understand that they received the consultants report in October 2016 and then took over 9 months to bring about their removal for allegedly Health and Safety reasons. Nobody can construe that as acting ‘at pace’ to ensure that the public were safe. They then left the site even more dangerous than it was before the lifts were removed:

 

And the dangerous building has still not been removed despite this being part of the clean-up plan – although someone has decided to improve its appearance:

Health and Safety and the Daylodge

During the summer of 2018, parkswatch published a post (see here) that showed the dilapidated state of the environs around the Daylodge. That post made it clear that the retaining wall at the corner of the Daylodge was in a state of collapse, that a large granite block had already fallen out of it and that it was clearly unsafe. Any child scrambling around that area, as children do, could be at risk of coming to harm if a further collapse were to occur. To our astonishment, we discovered today, the 10^th of January 2019, that no remedial work whatsoever had been done to this potentially unsafe structure.

What makes that even worse, if it can be worse, is that this is a disabled persons access ramp and it can clearly be seen that the railings remain broken today, just as they were last June.

The original post also made it clear that the tenant was failing to adhere to their lease obligations in terms of maintenance. It’s a dreadful indictment of HIE’s ineptitude to find that nothing was ever done about this situation. HIE continued to allow a potential H&S issue to develop as well as failing to hold their tenant to the terms of their lease.  

There isn’t any doubt that Health and Safety has been ignored here.

 

Health and Safety and remaining uplift

In November 2018, parkswatch published a report (see here) that highlighted safety concerns with respect to uplift infrastructure, on the hill. This report was prepared because there had been no remedial maintenance work undertaken in response to annual reports, in 2015, 2016 and 2017 made by ADAC Structures. These reports highlighted issues that were of concern to the reporting engineer but which had not been rectified.

 

The Save the Ciste campaign contacted HIE directly because there was the possibility that identified issues could have placed public safety at risk due to the absence of remedial attention. On 2 November, an email response was received from HIE:

‘’As you know, the operator is responsible for maintenance and Health and Safety obligations as part of the Lease and Operating Agreement that HIE has in place with CML [Cairngorm Mountain Ltd run by Natural Retreats]. We have been in touch with CML over the document that you sent us and sought their assurance that any action required is being taken’’

There was collective astonishment at such a weak response. HIE were seeking assurances from the tenant who had failed to undertake the necessary maintenance over a period of 3 years that they would then put things right. We were later to discover that nothing was done and HIE didn’t bother to follow this up.

The Save the Ciste campaign had the fortitude to send a copy of the report to the Health and Safety Executive. That was something that the members felt compelled to do because of the uncertainty over whether HIE would treat the matter with the necessary seriousness and because we were also uncertain that the operator would take the remedial action called for, having already failed to undertake the maintenance in the first place.

The public can be assured that the Health and Safety Executive took the matter very seriously and they made a site inspection on 6 December 2018. An email received from them on 9 January 2019 said this:

‘’Safety concerns constituting breaches of Health and Safety Law were identified regarding several tows looked at during this visit….resulting in formal enforcement action being taken. 3 improvement notices have been served.’’

While the Improvement Notices are not publicly available due to maintenance on the HSE website, so its unclear what actions have been required of CairnGorm Mountain, it would appear that nothing had been done between 2 November 2018 when HIE were ‘seeking assurances from their tenant’ and 6 December 2018 when the HSE made their inspection visit. That completely vindicates the Save the Ciste campaign’s decision to involve the HSE.

Readers should also note that HIE had for a long time failed to ensure that their tenant, Natural Retreats, was adhering to the terms of their lease with respect to maintenance quite apart from ignoring the Health and Safety aspects.   With CML going into administration, they have now been left to pick up the pieces and the cost through the new company they have created.

On 12 June 2018, Charlotte Wright, CEO at HIE wrote this in an email to parkswatch:

‘’HIE remains satisfied that our monitoring arrangements of the contract between HIE and CML are rigorous and compliant’’ 

All of the information written above shows just how  laughable that statement is in reality. HIE completely failed to monitor their tenant’s compliance with the lease terms in respect of maintenance and they also didn’t take their Health and Safety responsibilities seriously, in any of the above mentioned cases.

 

What needs to happen?

When a pressure group, populated by committed volunteers, has to bring potentially serious Health and Safety concerns to the attention of the HSE and that leads to enforcement action being taken then there are very grave causes for concern. HIE have been shown to be thoroughly incompetent and the public can have no faith in them as an organization that is fit to own and manage the CairnGorm Estate and the business located thereon. The entire CairnGorm Estate must now be brought into Community ownership with HIE retaining all financial liabilities for their dysfunctional Funicular Railway as well as providing the capital necessary to redevelop the business after a decade of decline under their ownership.

Public Relations disasters will continue to follow HIE around because  the evidence suggests that it isn’t a capable organisation and it clearly lacks effective leadership.

We are left to wonder just exactly what has to happen before the government takes the decisive action that is urgently required. A first step in the restoration of public confidence would be for a cross party parliamentary committee to be convened to examine the entire CairnGorm debacle. Evidence can then be sought from all stakeholder groups.