CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 6 12^th August 2022

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

HEALTH & SAFETY MEETING

19 July 2022

Minutes

In Attend­ance: Kate Christie Pip Mack­ie Alan Smith Mark Pocock Colin Simpson Becky Stan­ton Lisa Maclsaac Liz Henderson

Wel­come

I. KC opened the meet­ing and wel­comed the new staff and new mem­bers to the H&SC: — Colins Simpson (CS – Head of Vis­it­or Ser­vices and Act­ive Travel), Becky Stan­ton (BS — Facil­it­ies Assist­ant) and Lisa MacIsaac (LM — Gov­ernance, Data & Report­ing Man­ager). PM to arrange IOSH Man­aging Safely train­ing for all 3.

Review of Minutes and pre­vi­ous actions:

1. Minutes reviewed as per action log. Key points that came up for dis­cus­sion were as follows: -

   a. Fire Mar­shalls — we now have 35 people trained but the chal­lenge is that because of hybrid work­ing and flex­ible work pat­terns, we do not know which of the fire mar­shalls are in each day and there­fore if we are leg­ally com­pli­ant. Agreed that PM would share with BS the list of trained fire mar­shalls and BS would collate/​compare this with the sign in/​out sheets to ensure we have an adequate num­ber in each day. If this ana­lys­is iden­ti­fies any days/​time where we do not have accept­able fire mar­shall cov­er for the num­ber of staff in that day, we will recon­vene to dis­cuss how to man­age this going for­ward. b. Colin Simpson to go on to the Seni­or Respons­ible Officer rota (which is the last line of report­ing in the event of a ser­i­ous incid­ent as per the Ser­i­ous Incid­ent Pro­ced­ure and Late Back Emer­gency Pro­ced­ure. AS to liaise with CS on this. c. 4 X 4 train­ing. One per­son has missed the oppor­tun­it­ies made avail­able. As we are recruit­ing more Peat­land staff, we will slot this per­son in to the train­ing we provide the new peat­land staff. PM to action d. MP advised that Safeshores, the com­pany who provide the lone work­ing Chap­er­one devices have been taken over, which has delayed the roll-out of train­ing to all users and will involve the set up of a new portal, but we are unclear when this will hap­pen. We agreed that MP would con­cen­trate on get­ting devices for new staff who don’t yet have them and train­ing for them based on exist­ing portal to ensure all staff are safe and covered for the sum­mer sea­son; and will then con­cen­trate on get­ting to grips with the new portal and will then arrange train­ing on the new portal. MP will also liaise with rel­ev­ant heads of ser­vice re needs for own versus shared devices, and lines of escal­a­tion, to be uploaded to the portal. Pri­or­ity staff who we assume need their own devices are peat­land, con­ser­va­tion, access team, CCP team and land man­age­ment. Plan­ning staff already have a shared device sys­tem that is work­ing. AS con­firmed Rangers are covered, and that they have altern­at­ive pro­ced­ures in place for areas where there are black spots with regards to connectivity.

Cov­id-19

1. There is a spike of cases cur­rently. We have recently moved to the hybrid work­ing approach where staff are expec­ted as a min­im­um to be in the office 50% con­trac­tu­al hours. Agreed that in the short term we would relax this if staff were wor­ried about attend­ing the office due to the spike in cases.
2. Agreed that the guid­ance recently cir­cu­lated to staff was pitched cor­rectly – i.e. encour­age staff to do a LFT if they have any cold symp­toms and not to attend if LFT is pos­it­ive; if a mem­ber of your house­hold is pos­it­ive, attend the office only if your LFT is negative.

Inspec­tion and Main­ten­ance Pro­ced­ures for Infrastructure

1. Liz Hende­r­son, Infra­struc­ture Man­ager presen­ted a paper cov­er­ing the fol­low­ing:- a. This is a pro­posed infra­struc­ture inspection/​maintenance pro­ced­ure for CNPA-respons­ible infra­struc­ture b. Instig­ated by a recent incid­ent at The Still where a mem­ber of the pub­lic was scratched by wire and her cloth­ing dam­aged c. This pro­moted an invest­ig­a­tion of infra­struc­ture CNPA might own or be respons­ible for d. Iden­ti­fied this accoun­ted for the 29 gran­ite entry mark­ers, 3 art install­a­tions (Snowroads); and bridges over the Spey­side Way e. The paper pro­poses how we might main­tain these sites in the future and pro­ced­ures for inspec­tion. f. Each gran­ite mark­er has a man­age­ment agree­ment with the rel­ev­ant land man­ager — they are about 15 years old. g. The art install­a­tions are more com­plex as they are designed to be inter­act­ive — i.e. climbed upon etc h. Pro­pos­al is that we ini­tially arrange for a civil engin­eer to inspect all the iden­ti­fied infra­struc­ture for struc­tur­al integ­rity. This inspec­tion will identi­fy any degrad­a­tion and con­firm if the sites are safe i. Then remedi­al action (if any) will be instig­ated. We should have a plan in place by the end of this year of any defects and remedi­al action j. There­after, there will be annu­al inspec­tions of the sites, con­duc­ted by the rangers, and based on a check­list that LH will pull togeth­er. Rangers will not be required/​expected to make repairs – if they identi­fy any issues/​faults, these will then be escal­ated to Liz and then Colin k. Struc­tur­al inspec­tions will then take place every 5 years, and this will be reflec­ted on the Stra­tegic Risk Register I. There remains an issue at The Still par­tic­u­larly with regards the gabi­an bas­kets at the steps where the con­tents have settled caus­ing the wire mesh to sag — Liz will liaise with the Crown Estate in this regard. She con­firmed that there are warn­ing signs in place currently
2. In dis­cus­sion, H&SC agreed that it made sense for CS to be a part of the H&SC. AS con­firmed that all sites would form part of stand­ard patrol routes of the rangers any­way, and there­fore would prob­ably be inspec­ted more than the pro­posed once/​year. Liz asked if CNPA had a stand­ard call of con­tract with any­one for structural/​facilities repairs. MP con­firmed that we typ­ic­ally used Laing’s for facil­it­ies work.
3. H&SC signed off the pro­pos­als and Liz con­firmed she would now pro­gress the plan.

Facil­it­ies matters

1. MP repor­ted that at his recent vis­it to the Bal­later office, the fire exit door by the meet­ing room was blocked by prams and bug­gies, which is a breach of fire reg­u­la­tions. MP to raise this with Halls Committee
2. Facil­it­ies team flagged that the main door at the exten­sion is still being left unlocked at night which is a sig­ni­fic­ant secur­ity risk. The prob­lem is that the door design is such that after its been locked, any­one can still inad­vert­ently unlock it from inside by simply pulling the door handle down – its basic­ally a poor lock­ing mech­an­ism. It was dis­cussed if a slide lock could be installed on the door as a second lock, but this could there­fore only be locked from the inside and would there­fore also have to be unlocked from the inside. Facil­it­ies team to invest­ig­ate if an addi­tion­al lock mech­an­ism con­tra­venes fire safety and if not, to instal a lock

Ranger Ser­vice

1. Alan provided the fol­low­ing updates. a. Its been a rel­at­ively quite sum­mer from the per­spect­ive of any vis­it­or issues/​problems iden­ti­fied by the Ranger ser­vice b. The approach with regards vehicles has worked very well (i.e. approx 9 x hire vehicles based at Bal­later, Grant­own and Auchentoul offices) c. Giv­en so many of the sea­son­al team are ​“return­ers”, H&S and risk assess­ments etc is becom­ing second hand for them d. The 4 train­ee rangers have settled in well. They nev­er work alone and are always bud­died up. e. We have 2 x train­ee ranger work exper­i­ence stu­dents from both loc­al high­schools and this too is work­ing well.

AOB

1. None -

Risk Assess­ments

1. H&SC mem­bers to advise Mark P when they’ve updated a RA for final check by Mark

Action log

Actions from this meet­ing – 19/07/22

Action	Respons­ible per­son and Status
IOSH Man­aging Safely train­ing to be arranged for CS, BS and LM	PM
Colin to be added to SRO rota and explained how it works	AS
4 x 4 train­ing for new Peat­land staff to include per­son who has missed it to date	PM
Safeshores devices to new staff and train­ing for all users	MP
Infra­struc­ture inspec­tion and main­ten­ance plan to be implemented	LH/CS
Halls Com­mit­tee re blocked fire exit	MP
Addi­tion­al loch mech­an­ism for main door exten­sion to be investigated	Facil­it­ies team

Actions out­stand­ing from pre­vi­ous meetings

Meet­ing Date	Action	Respons­ible person
30/03/22	Invest­ig­ate as part of office return eval­u­ation: • move to an elec­tron­ic sign in/​out system,	Facil­it­ies team to review elec­tron­ic sign in/​out sys­tem and bring back pro­pos­als to next H&S meeting
	Staff to be advised about RA tem­plate and sign off procedures	Actioned 08/04/22 newsletter
	H&SC recom­mend­a­tions re CNPA man­aged sites	Actioned and LH brough this back to 19/07/22 meet­ing for discussion
	Staff to be reminded of lone/​remote work­ing procedures	Actioned 08/04/22 newsletter
	E‑vehicle train­ing commenced	MP has now trained BS on how to use e‑vehicles. Still to train BS on how to train staff
	Ranger Ser­vices PPE being man­aged by Jenny	Mark to share templates
	H&S Policy updates to be shared with Grant for approv­al and signature	Actioned
	Con­sider remov­ing H&S Backpacks	Kate to raise via SCF and to flag to staff need to com­plete per­son­al risk assess­ment and include PPE require­ments via news­let­ter. Actioned in 8th April newsletter
16/12/21	All to advise MP once RAs have been updated, so MP can ensure con­sist­ency of templates	Ongo­ing
19/03/19	Bal­later Pan­ic alarm — the alarm is to be moved to the CNPA office when the office is recon­figured. A peep hole will be put in the intern­al door of the office, as cur­rently staff are not able to see who is at the door if the knock	MP (on hold pending work to com­mence recon­fig­ur­a­tion of office). MP to get a quote any­way to hold on record.