“A mountain coaster is a massive source of income but has to be implemented by the community”. This was part of a Facebook post on Sunday 23/06/2019, the claim being that the business plan proposed by the Aviemore and Glenmore Community Trust (A&GCT) and the SE Group showed a good profit could be made from…
Tag: HIE
On 19/02/2019 I applied to Highlands and Islands Enterprise, under a Freedom of Information request, for the ADAC Structures report into the Condition of the Funicular Railway from November 2015, (see here – 6.5MB file). I subsequently received this on May Bank holiday Monday, 06/05/2019, at 09.31. This was five days after the Big Breakfast…
Audit Scotland has at long last decided to take a look at Highland and Island Enterprise’s management of Cairn Gorm (see here) as part of their annual audit process. The areas for investigation have been identified with staff, which gives little cause for confidence, and focuses on risk from the narrow perspective of an annual…
The compulsory parking charge scheme at Cairn Gorm, introduced by Natural Retreats in June 2018 was dropped in September of that year (see here). There was no point in continuing to make parking charges compulsory when the Funicular failed and the number of tourist visits crashed. The number of skiers who visited Cairn Gorm last…
Parkswatch previously published information about the amounts collected from Voluntary Donations at the Coire Cas car park between 2013 and 2017 (see here). HIE were asked to detail how that money had been spent and although they ‘did not have that information’’ they asserted ‘funds were committed to car park maintenance and other projects’ We…
The revised Planning Application to redevelop and expand the Ptarmigan Restaurant near the top of Cairn Gorm is to be considered by the Cairngorms National Park Authority on Friday (see here – item 6). Officers are recommending that the application should be approved. This post explains why CNPA Board Members should reject the application and…
Highlands and Islands Enterprise, as owners and custodians of the Cairn Gorm Estate, have full responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of the public assets that lie within the estate. In an article published in the Press and Journal on Thursday 16 May 2019 headed “Cairngorm funicular report held up over potential legal action” (see…
Just six weeks after the Cairngorms National Park Authority adopted a set of working principles for future development at Cairn Gorm (see here), including the need for a masterplan BEFORE any new Planning Applications were considered, guess what? Highlands and Islands Enterprise has submitted yet another Planning Application to Highland Council for Cairn Gorm (see…
The Scottish Parliament has been a target for Climate Change protesters, including ‘Extinction Rebellion’, while school children have been taking days off school to protest. It’s big news and rightfully so with the future of our planet and even our very existence at stake. The Scottish Government have declared a ‘Climate Emergency’ and vowed to…
I had been meaning to follow up why the last meeting of the Cairngorms National Park Authority Board had held a confidential discussion on Cairngorm Mountain when last week the Cairngorms National Park Authority published a new document., “Cairngorm Mountain – CNPA Working Principles”. An email to the Cairngorms National Park Authority established that the…
This is the second, in a series of posts (see here), about HIE’s mismanagement of Cairn Gorm based on their latest response to my questions about the procurement process which led to CairnGorm Mountain Ltd being outsourced to “Natural Retreats”. In 2013 Highlands and Islands Enterprise excluded Cairngorms Snowsports, a sound local company with a…
At the end of last week Highlands and Islands Enterprise provided me with a number of documents relating to their decision to “appoint” “Natural Retreats” to “operate” Cairngorm Mountain Ltd. To give HIE credit, they have not tried to delay release of the information and relatively little of it is redacted. The documents confirm there…
Almost the first thing Highland and Islands Enterprise did after it bought back Cairn Gorm Mountain was to inform the Cairngorms National Park Authority that it wished to proceed with the Planning Application to redevelop the Ptarmigan building near the summit of Cairn Gorm (see here for background). About a month ago stories appeared in…
The posts on parkswatch last week by Graham Garfoot (see here) and Alan Brattey (see here) coincided with the excellent coverage from the BBC about Highland and Islands Enterprise’s disastrous management of Cairn Gorm. This appeared on both radio and TV and while I had been interviewed for the story a few weeks ago I…
The CairnGorm Funicular has been inoperable for the last 6 months and the economic impact of the closure was brought into sharp focus this week in an article published in the excellent Strathspey and Badenoch Herald. There has very clearly been a considerable negative impact and local businesses have expressed dismay at the lack of…
Following my post on 28/2/2019 about the ADAC Structure and COWI reports on the funicular (see here), this post shows how Highlands and Islands Enterprise are deliberately trying to cover up and hide information about what has gone wrong with the Funicular on Cairngorm. I sent an FOI request on 03/10/2018 for two other reports…
Following the failure of the Funicular Railway and the predictably adverse impact that this would have on the hill business and the wider local economy, Highlands and Islands Enterprise purchased a SnowFactory and 8 TR8 Snow Cannons from TechnoAlpin in an attempt to ensure at least some snowsports on CairnGorm, this winter. This post looks…
[This post was sent as a letter to the Badenoch and Strathspey Advertiser, which has been providing excellent coverage of the funicular failure, and should appear in that paper today] In March 2018 I applied to Highlands and Islands Enterprise under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act for the ADAC Structures report into the funicular…
A couple of weeks ago I drafted an article about the disgraceful state of the Coire na Ciste Car Park. I went up there at the weekend to find it had been cleared up. The appointment of Ross Harris as interim Chief Executive of the new ski area operating company, Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd, would…
The Report in the Strathy last week was based on the proposals for winding up the former Cairngorm Mountain Ltd (CML) which the Administrator has lodged at Companies House (see here). This post takes a further look at what it reveals about the mismanagement of Cairngorm Mountain over the last five years. Background note…
Highland and Islands Enterprise’s announcement last week (see here) that the funicular would remain out of action for the summer and possibly longer, failed to explain what has caused the problems or the likely cost of the repairs that might be needed to make it safe to use again. Meantime it has announced that the…
Following my post (see here) on the flawed and unfair procurement process which resulted in Cairngorm Mountain Ltd being sold off to Natural Assets Investment Ltd, I have started to work out the costs to the public purse to date of that disastrous decision. The HIE Board should be doing this that would mean them…
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…
Most of the Information Requests that activists have submitted to Highlands and Islands Enterprise about Cairngorm are now being deal with under the Environmental Information [Scotland] Regulations 2014 rather than the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act, though both pieces of legislation are broadly similar. The EIRs place a duty on public bodies to make environmental…
Yesterday, Highlands and Islands Enterprise was forced to release the full copy of the Report it had commissioned from SE Group into ski infrastructure at Cairn Gorm. After HIE failed to publish the Report when launching its new vision for Cairn Gorm (see here), several people submitted freedom of information requests. Then, when the information…