On the 11th November the Strathy published an interview with Susan Smith, Chief Executive of Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) (see here) Highland and Island Enterprise’s subsidiary that manages Cairn Gorm.  This week they published an excellent response from Alan Brattey, sometime contributor to parkswatch (see above).  This post picks up on some of the claims Susan Smith made on behalf of HIE/CMSL in the Strathy article which Alan was not able to fully address.

Susan Smith’s call for unity

Strathy “The boss of Cairngorm Mountain has called for unity as the first green shoots of recovery start to be seen at the key attraction for Badenoch and Strathspey.”

Comment:  two days later Winter Highland pointed out in a facebook post that CMSL had recently pulled out of the arrangements for the Scotland all area ski pass:

This exposes the hyprocrisy of Susan Smith’s call for unity. Calls for “unity” or “to work together” – the chair of HIE called for this after the launch of the masterplan last year – are always on HIE’s terms and little more than a tactic to try and silence criticism. There never will be any truth and reconciliation at Cairn Gorm, so long as HIE is in charge and HIE has always put its own interests at Cairn Gorm before the wider public interest.

Climate change and the masterplan at Cairn Gorm

Strathy summary “Work is currently progressing on new uplift – two magic carpets – on the lower slopes ahead of new bike trails opening around late Spring.

It is the first part of the 25-year masterplan to climate proof the business whilst the funicular is scheduled to be back on track early next year after an absence of more than four years on safety grounds.”

Comment: a week later the Strathy ran another  article on the soaring costs of the funicular repairs (see below) which stated: “HIE has revealed now that it has reallocated uncommitted funds from the wider Cairngorm masterplan capital investment package to meet the additional costs”.  Where does that leave the masterplan then?   And as for the masterplan, how does creating a beginner’s ski area at the bottom of the mountain and moving the snow factory slightly up from the car park at enormous cost help climate proof the business (see here)?

 

A different business?

Strathy: “the appointment by resort owners Highlands and Islands Enterprise of private holiday rental company Natural Retreats in 2014 to run the business turned into a corporate disaster.

The public agency had to pick up the pieces after the previous operator went into administration a short time after the funicular was closed in September 2018.

Ms Smith said: “We are different now. We are a private operator run by a commercial board owned by the public sector.”

Comment: as Alan Brattey pointed out in his letter, Susan Smith and Charlotte Wright were the two members of HIE staff primarily responsible for the appointment of Natural Retreats – I have lots of correspondence and documents on file to prove it – yet neither have ever acknowledged let alone apologised for their role in the debacle or the cost to the public purse.  A small illustration of this is that having sold Cairngorm Mountain to Natural Retreats in 2014 for the knockdown price of £231,239 they then bought the bankrupt business back from the receiver for £447,540 in December 2019!

Susan Smith’s claim that CMSL is a private operator while 100% of its shares are owned by HIE is complete tosh.  Far from being run commercially it is now totally dependant on HIE for grant funding and its accounts are a charade (see here).

This is just another attempt to cover-up what is going on, like the false information on the Companies House website that claims there is no person (a legal term that includes both individuals and organisations) with significant control:

The Directors of CMSL are appointed by HIE and totally at their beck and call. As an illustration of this, it is HIE which issues “news” about what CMSL is doing at Cairn Gorm (see here for a recent example).

Creating a better place?

Strathy: “Cairngorm Mountain (Scotland) Ltd boss Susan Smith said she wants to create a destination that the local community can be proud of.”

AND

“I am passionate about leaving here a much better place than I found it. I spend 14 to 15 hours every day listening, caring about what we do…”

Comment: reinforcing what Alan Brattey says in his letter about Coire na Ciste, Susan Smith would appear to be too busy listening to step out of the door of her office and look at what is happening on her patch:

OR

Lip-service to the local community?

Susan Smith as quoted by the Strathy: 

“We care about the local community; we care about offering good employment to local people.

“We want to sell this mountain as a place to live, work and play.”

Comment: Susan Smith appears to have been carried away by her own spin – does she really want to sell Cairn Gorm as somewhere to live?

In terms of caring for the local community, it was Susan Smith who decided on the advice of EY, her “commercial advisers” to exclude the Cairngorm Ski School, an excellent local business, from bidding for Cairngorm Mountain Ltd as it then was in 2013 and instead awarded Natural Retreats, a company with no track record and whose owners were based down in England, the contract.

The most recent minutes of the Cairngorm Advisory Group (see here), a body totally dominated by HIE and CMSL staff, show that in March HIE – with Susan Smith involved – was once again considering outsourcing the business.  To his credit, Grant Moir the Chief Executive of the Cairngorms National Park Authority, cautioned against this.  Meantime, Susan Smith and HIE continue to shut out the Aviemore and Glenmore Community Trust from taking over the business as Alan Brattey explained in his letter.

The skills required to manage Cairn Gorm?

Strathy:  “Ms Smith confessed she now understands the business much better than she did in her first year at the helm”.

Comment: this is very helpful as it explains how Susan Smith and HIE thought eight years ago it was a good idea to outsource Cairngorm Mountain Ltd to Natural Retreats – they really had no understanding of snowsports at Cairn Gorm or what was required.  Eight years later and after serving a time as acting chief executive, Susan Smith was appointed Chief Executive with the Chair of CMSL claiming she was an excellent leader (see here).  You can judge that for yourself, but by her own admission she clearly had a lot to learn.

And finally

Just as with its original construction, the repair costs for the funicular have mushroomed:

This was quite predictable.  When HIE put their business case to repair the funicular, they never explained why the towers supporting the railway had started to lean.  Graham Garfoot covered the possible reasons in a series of posts that asked whether the repairs will work (see here)?

HIE has still not come clean about the reasons the funicular became unsafe, but it appears Balfour Beatty has during the course of the repair work  developed an understanding of the problems because there has been a lot more work on the funicular than originally planned:

All this explains the vast increase in costs and provides further proof that HIE’s business case for the repair of the funicular was fundamentally flawed (see here) and (here).  The financial disaster at Cairn Gorm is entirely down to HIE’s failures and Susan Smith’s claims in the Strathy that this was down to factors like the weather is completely misleading.

One hopes now that the railway safety inspectors will demand a full explanation of what the engineers believe has gone wrong and how the repair work will address the problems before allowing the funicular to re-open.