The Ciste building is a derelict eyesore and should be removed. Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) own the land and building and it is therefore their responsibility to take the necessary action.
Complete demolition and landscaping of the ground might seem like the most obvious and easiest answer but it isn’t quite that simple. The building houses a substation from which the power is cabled to the West Wall (WW) Poma drive station.
It seems then that the power from the internally housed substation will be required into the future unless or until HIE/Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd decide to either abandon the WW Poma or to cable the power to it from the Ptarmigan building at the top of the mountain. Power should be available from there because the WW Chairlift drive station was at the top of the chairlift and the power for it came down from the Ptarmigan building.
The WW Poma could of course be drastically reduced in length with the loading area and drive station re-located at the same height as the the Ciste T-Bar loading area. Lift-served access to Coire na Ciste could then be abandoned completely and the Ciste building substation would no longer be required…….allowing full demolition of the Ciste building.
An alternative and more meritorious solution would be for an enterprising business or Community Trust to take over the area and develop a new business there.
What has HIE done to address the eyesore?
On 4 December 2013 a planning application was made to Highland Council for ‘reconfiguration of existing building to strip back to transformer area only and for re-cladding and re-roofing of enclosure. That application was ‘called in’ for determination by the Cairngorm National Park Authority, on 16 December 2014 and subsequently approved on 11 March 2014.
Nothing was then done before the planning consent lapsed 3 years later.
A re-application was submitted on 1 March 2017 and that was granted permission on 5 April 2017.
That planning consent has also lapsed with nothing having been done.
Planning applications come with associated costs. For example, on 26 October 2017, the agents acting for HIE informed them that the warrant fee for the demolition/rebuild would be £656 and that their fee for re-submission of the warrant and liaising with building control would be £995. The agents would also have charged an appropriate fee for producing the drawings for the rebuilt building. Additionally, labour costs would have been incurred by Cairngorm Mountain Ltd, HIE, Highland Council and CNPA. An expensive process which ended up with HIE informing their agents that they did not intend to take this forward at the present time.
Over a period which now exceeds 6 years, HIE have managed to do nothing except spend public money. It’s a classic example of a gross waste of public funds because there has been no benefit at all from the expenditures incurred
HIE’s response to alternative proposals
The Ciste Building and car park area is a publicly owned asset that is out of use, generates no income and provides no employment. The report produced by the SE Group in 2018 ruled out the reinstatement of uplift from the Ciste car park on the basis that the number of skier days, on any discrete day, was insufficient to support two separate entry points, to the hill. However, they didn’t conduct any further analysis and their report was seriously flawed by omission.
There have been at least two enquiries made to HIE about the possibility of taking over/leasing the Ciste building/car park area with a view to establishing a business enterprise there. A number of ideas have been put forward for such as a café, micro lodge accommodation, campervan hook ups, an Environmental Education Centre and a Geo-Caching Centre as well as a Nordic/Backcountry Snowsports hub.
HIE, as the Government’s Enterprise Agency in the Highlands were quick to kick these ideas into touch. The Cairn Gorm Estate is leased to CairnGorm Mountain [Scotland] Ltd, its wholly owned subsidiary, and it seems HIE will not consider a sub-lease to a third party. That’s despite the fact that a precedent exists with a sub-lease to the Scottish Ski Club for their hut which sits adjacent to the bottom of the White Lady ski piste. HIE has also said that they would not consider any business proposal until after the so-called ‘masterplan’ has been produced.
It is quite extraordinary that the Enterprise Agency should turn away any proposal to develop this public asset when they have done nothing with it themselves over many years and the fact that they have no plans to develop it. The inescapable conclusion is they incapable for developing this area themselves but they are afraid of any competition and are not therefore about to permit anyone else to do something positive with it.
The opportunity is now there for those who proposed to do something with this asset to get back to HIE and demand that they fully engage in meaningful discussions. HIE need to be forced to demonstrate that they are acting to address the criticism within the recent Audit Scotland Report in respect of their failure to engage with stakeholders(see here).
At a time when everything there is a great need to create new businesses and hence new jobs, the HIE standpoint must be robustly challenged and it cannot be allowed to stand. Badenoch and Strathspey has suffered enough from HIE’s inertia and incompetence. The Scottish Snowsports industry has also been damaged by the continuing fiasco on Cairn Gorm. It is well past the time for HIE to be removed from all decisions about the future of Cairn Gorm Mountain, though they should still be required to pay the tab. Scotland, as a whole, deserves much better than this from those in positions of authority. The Scottish Government should show the strength of leadership required to make the hard decisions necessary to bring about real change so that benefits could then accrue.
In the meantime, the Graffiti Artists have occasionally been at work.
Their efforts have at least created some work for CMSL staff to do…..by painting out their drawings!
Back in the day, this was a terrific facility for the more experienced skier, providing fast and efficient uplift to the more challenging ski areas, and offered late season skiing back to the car park. The building did house an upper floor cafe for meals served from a very small kitchen, although as this side of the mountain was for more serious skiers, they chose to ski rather than lunch. The lower floor housed a ticket office so in effect it was a one stop shop for those who chose to avoid the more popular side of the mountain with all its queues to get in the carpark, buy a ticket, wait for uplift. The Coire Ciste side of the mountain absorbed the stress from the Coire Cas side, and provided two primary means of uplift, and offered a relatively sheltered alternative way up when the wind was blowing a hoolie on the Cas side. It was an act of negligence that the Coire Ciste was allowed to fall into disrepair upon the arrival of the ill-fated Funicular, by the very same management who through lack of attention to health and safety diligence have jeopardised not only snow sports on Cairngorm but the livelihoods and wellbeing of the Valley.
Oh spare me. It has rarely been possible to ski to the bottom of the Ciste in many years. The climate is changing, and as regards Cairngorm skiing, has changed dramatically in the last few years. There is no business case for renewing mechanical uplift from the obscene acres of tarmac at the Ciste car park. The uplift from the Cas is economically marginal to say the least. If subsidising mechanical uplift is the remit of a National Park, then so be it. I am not sure that that is why they were established.
Thanks for your comments Gerard. You are absolutely right with what you’ve said and there are still plenty of people out there who fondly remember the days when the ski area was successful. It is absolutely no coincidence that the Cairngorm snowsports market share fell off a cliff in the season following the unjustifiable destruction of the Ciste and West Wall Chairlifts which could both have ben returned to use at a cost that would have been much less than HIE have wasted on CairnGorm since then. The tens of thousands of snowsports enthusiasts who have foresaken CairnGorm over the last few years will simply not be encouraged to return by a repaired Funicular. The hill business has been placed into a position where it is completely unsustainable
Surely it is time now for the Scottish Government to step in and order at least the transfer of the Coire na Ciste part of Cairn Gorm to Forestry and Land Scotland? Such a land transfer would not involve any complex discussions about the future of the funicular and associated liabilities, as these are all in Coire Cas, but would enable FLS to sort out the dilapidated building at the bottom of the Ciste and to manage the car park area and its associated ground, integrating the Ciste with the FLS management of their other ground on the lower slopes of the mountain going down into Glenmore. Such a land transfer could be achieved before the elections to the Scottish Parliament next May. After that, we may have a new generation of politicians in the Scottish Parliament who are capable of sorting out the rest of the disaster which revolves around the supreme incompetence of HIE and its Cairngorms misadventures.
An interesting short to medium term solution, Dave. The less land that HIE has control of the better, and after a tidy up of the decaying facilities, it might be interesting to see how open FLS would be to ideas to make the Ciste side of the mountain more attractive to nature tourism, motor-home parking or even something more ambitious. We live in a competitive world, why is HIE permitted to have a monopoly of the decision making, especially when their track record has been so abysmal.
Funny no one mentions Mountain Biking as one possible activity here. A couple of new single tracks going down from here through the trees to link up with with the many existing tracks lower down. No snow, no problem and well off the ‘sacred’ CairnGorm upper slopes. Works elswhere in Scotland and is a sport that is growing too.
The STC campaign investigated the possibility of creating Mountain Bike Trails from the Ciste carpark down through the trees into Glenmore. We’d also thought that it would make a great route for ski pistes, being sheltered by the trees [and we knew that snowmaking could have maintained these pistes throughout the season because we’d temperature data from Loch Morlich side]. However, that area is a nature reserve and SNH told us that there was no chance of anyone ever gaining planning consent for Mountain Bike Trails, or anything else.
I find that a bit odd. Glenmore,Abernethy and craigellachie are all Nature reserves but all have numerous walking paths and trails also used by cyclists. If anything cyclists are far less likely to go off the tracks than walkers and unlikely to bother nesting birds and other wildlife. Was it the SNH that insisted on the ill fated funicular rather than the gondolar suggested by the Austrians?