The accounts for Natural Assets Investment Ltd (NAIL) (see here), the zombie company which bought Cairngorm Mountain Ltd (CML) from Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), were published at the end of September. NAIL placed CML into administration after the funicular became unsafe to operate in 2018 and was one of the parties HIE subsequently sued….
Tag: natural retreats
I have always been sceptical about Highland and Island Enterprise (HIE)’s funicular court cases going ahead because of what further it might reveal about their incompetence. But those court cases (see here) may be the price the Scottish Government has exacted for picking up the cost (c£26m?) of the funicular repairs There was an interesting…
My last post (see here), on the facilities available for snowsports enthusiasts parking in Coire na Ciste, failed to highlight the deterioration in bus services to Cairn Gorm, as a couple of readers pointed out afterwards. I hope this post will help make up for that. The current situation In June 2021 Highlands and Islands…
With the funicular re-opened, the natural advantage that Cairngorm Mountain has over Scotland’s other downhill snowsports areas due to its altitude has been very apparent this week. While the other resorts have no snow, the beginner slopes in the Ptarmigan bowl are stlll in good condition. Over 1000ft below, Cairngorm Mountain’s unnatural advantages over other…
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…
Highland and Islands Enterprise/Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd are now pushing ahead with repair work to the Funicular and the smoothing ground-work outside the Daylodge has been completed (see here). There are also plans to install two new tube slides, create a new access track, move the snow factory and install car park barriers. Meanwhile, nothing…
Just 14 months after Cairngorm Mountain went bust, the company that operated it and got away scot free has gone into administration. That should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the Natural Retreats saga in the Highlands. This post takes a look at the latest financial losses attributable to Highland and Islands…
Full details of the job vacancy can be found on the HIE website (https://www.hie.co.uk/about-us/vacancies/cairngorm-project-lead/) Questions raised by this new job advertisement include: How has HIE been managing (or is it mis-managing) Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd and planning the…
Alistair Bell’s open letter published on 2nd January (see here) was fascinating as an insider’s tale of what has happened to downhill skiing on Cairn Gorm. But I disagree with his final conclusion. Basically, he tackles the old issue “Cock-up or Conspiracy” and decides it was a conspiracy along the lines of the Gas Lighting…
With the ongoing crisis at Cairn Gorm, the bungled planning applications and the question of the funicular, its important that people don’t forget how Highlands and Island’s enterprise created this pickle. After the decision to build the funicular in the first place, arguably HIE’s greatest mistake was the sale of Cairngorm Mountain Ltd to Natural…
The Funicular Railway on Cairn Gorm has now been out of service for more than a year. Its future remains unclear although Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) have said that it is their intention to have it repaired. Parkswatch has previously had a look at this from the point of view of skiers (see here) …
[A version of this post appeared as a letter in the Press and Journal on 14th September in response to a letter from Gordon Benton on 3rd September] A number of people and interests are advocating expansion of the facilities on Cairn Gorm to include a hill station to solve ongoing financial problems. It would…
Last week Audit Scotland, who are responsible for overseeing financial management by public authorities, published their annual audit of Highlands and Islands Enterprise (to March 2019) and a supplementary report “Cairngorm Mountain and the funicular railway”. The supplementary report (see here ) is succinct, extracts information which is hard to find in the main…
Following Alan Brattey’s post The Cairn Gorm Funicular: Repair or Remove?, on Thursday Highlands and Islands Enterprise revealed at a meeting organised by the Aviemore and Glenmore Community Trust (see above) that they intend to repair the funicular as: “We have an indicative cost of repairs, which is less than the costs of removing the…
The Snowfactory at the top of the Coire Cas Carpark is 8m tall and stands sentinel to HIE’s bureaucratic mismanagement at Cairn Gorm. A snowfactory trial was undertaken at CairnGorm during the winter of 2017/18. That was a direct response to the Aviemore Business Association exhorting the Cabinet Secretary with responsibility for HIE, Fergus Ewing…
[Update 5/7/19: following publication of this post HIE’s subsidiary Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd appear to have backtracked, having announced the ATV experience will be limited to the road up the Ptarmigan and is unlikely to take place more than once a month (see here). That appears a tacit admission that their original proposal was contrary…
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 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…
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…