Paper 3 - Draft H&SC minutes

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 3 13 Feb­ru­ary 2026 Page 1 of 9

For inform­a­tion Draft Health and Safety Com­mit­tee Minutes

Held at Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity office Hybrid 24 Novem­ber 2025 at 01.00pm

In Attend­ance Kate Christie Pip Mack­ie Mark Pocock Colin Simpson Beccy Stan­ton Alan Smith Emma Stewart

Apo­lo­gies None

Item 1: Review of minutes and pre­vi­ous actions

1. Updated in action log.
2. Roam­ing sim / Lone work­ing: a) Still in the pro­cess of audit­ing what sig­nals are in the loc­a­tions we use. The Con­ser­va­tion team are start­ing this audit in the areas they fre­quent. We need a sys­tem to report into a group map — ie report­ing our own data of where there is cov­er­age and which net­works. AS indic­ated the ranger team could help with this — Action for BS / AS and Paul Davison

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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b) BS has now spoken with the Conservation and Land Management teams. Isla Graham has a Garmin device. Possibility this could be shared. **BS to progress**
c) Lone working wash up training. Conservation and Planning have been done. Still to do: Land Management, Engagement, Transport and Access. **BS to progress**
d) We are still looking into the possibility of Garmin to Garmin texting. **BS to progress**

Item 2: Vehicle Dis­in­fec­tion Risk Assessment

1. Roy­al Soci­ety for the Pro­tec­tion of Birds (RSBP) had reques­ted our vehicles were dis­in­fec­ted pri­or to being used for the Board site vis­it in Kin­gussie. BS had made up a box with suit­able dis­in­fect­ant for vehicle and Per­son­al Pro­tec­tion Equip­ment (PPE), and draf­ted the risk assess­ment and meth­od state­ment — Vehicle dis­in­fec­tion risk assessment.docx. We had then dis­covered that there was already such a box in place (from Lewis Pâté’s time). It emerged also that Rebecca Watts had also developed a pro­ced­ure which included going off path. There were ques­tions about scope.
2. It was ques­tioned why the Park Author­ity should be doing this and asked if the respons­ib­il­ity lay with the landown­er, as we would typ­ic­ally only be on site at the invit­a­tion of the landowner.
3. Health and Safety Com­mit­tee signed off the risk assess­ment but it was agreed that BS would see if there was some­thing as SG level on bio­se­c­ur­ity to cov­er jobs / loc­a­tions in this regard.

Item 3: ATV accident

1. ES had writ­ten a detailed report about the acci­dent: 251113 Incid­ent information_​ATV accident_​ACM High­land Ltd.docx
2. Sum­mary of facts: a machine oper­at­or, employed by Wild­land Ltd to carry out peat­land res­tor­a­tion at Lynaber­ack Estate had been thrown out of an all-ter­rain vehicle (ATV). He had sus­tained broken bones and had been air­lif­ted to Aber­deen Roy­al Infirm­ary (ARI).
3. The Park Author­ity are design­er and grant fun­der and thereby have cer­tain respons­ib­il­it­ies under Cus­tom­er Rela­tion­ship Man­age­ment (CRM) reg­u­la­tions. The

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Health and Safety duty sits between the con­tract­or and cli­ent. As design­er, our roles are not to design pro­jects that will put con­tract­ors at risk.

1. The pro­ject had two vehicle access routes includ­ing a fjord over the river. The con­tract­or had had issues driv­ing the fjords for the pre­vi­ous two weeks but had not repor­ted that to the Park Author­ity or the landown­er. They had tried to drive a dump­er truck through the fjord that morn­ing which got flooded and stuck. They did not con­tact us to agree action. They got a loc­al con­tract­or to retrieve the truck.
2. Because they could not use the fjord, they decided to use the oth­er access route and get vehicles with the hand labour team to the hydro dam park­ing area. The hand labour team wanted a lift to site and that is why the ATV was com­ing to them from the pro­ject to pick them up from the point they could get to in road vehicles. The ATV was des­cend­ing a very steep track which appeared to be con­trary to guid­ance set out in the pro­ject design, whereby that route was mapped as a steep ground and only suit­able for access by foot. The driver said he had no memory of this.
3. Key for now was to get the ATV recovered and the pro­ject pre-start meet­ing up and run­ning. This mat­ter was being repor­ted to the Health and Safety Com­mit­tee for aware­ness, but the gen­er­al out­come of our invest­ig­a­tion was that there had been poor com­mu­nic­a­tion by the con­tract­or who should have shared inform­a­tion about the state of the fjord, and poor decision mak­ing by the ATV driver regard­ing the route he took, without dis­cus­sion. Col­lect­ive agree­ment with con­tract­or, Wild­land and Park Author­ity that going for­ward the con­tract­or needs to share what they are exper­i­en­cing on site, so they are not mak­ing all the decisions. Acknow­ledged also that we had not worked with this con­tract­or before and we sus­pec­ted they were not used to being sup­por­ted and there­fore did not appre­ci­ate the import­ance of shar­ing inform­a­tion and thereby, decision making.
4. CS high­lighted that his access team also worked with Con­struc­tion Design Man­age­ment (CDM) require­ments, and it was sug­ges­ted that we arrange CDM Reg­u­la­tions train­ing for rel­ev­ant staff, so they are fully aware of what our respons­ib­il­it­ies are. It was sug­ges­ted we also con­sider doing ​“scope of works” train­ing for the access, infra­struc­ture and trans­port teams. ES con­firmed that the peat­land team had done CRM train­ing. ES to send PM a link to the train­ing pro­vider. CS to decide what exact train­ing his team require and who in his team need to do that. PM and CS to liaise in this regard.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Item 4: Hot Drinks in the office

1. This dis­cus­sion was the res­ult of an acci­dent and incid­ent report invest­ig­a­tion whereby a staff mem­ber was scal­ded tak­ing a hot mug upstairs. It was recalled that we had branded cups with lids which were giv­en to all staff sev­er­al years ago and should we man­date lids on cups. The con­clu­sion was that this would be dis­pro­por­tion­ate where there had only been one incid­ent. Health and safety is everyone’s respons­ib­il­ity, and It was agreed to note this in the minute, which was always pos­ted on the health and safety Eolas page and thereby access­ible to all staff.

Item 5: Acci­dent and Incid­ent Reports

1. Noted that there have been eight acci­dent and incid­ent reports in the report­ing peri­od, down from 11 in the pre­vi­ous report­ing peri­od. The incid­ents were as fol­lows: a) A minor fall by a mem­ber of the pub­lic on a health walk. b) Burn on a hot drink ascend­ing the stairs as dis­cussed above. c) Scratch to ranger van when ranger pulled over on a nar­row track to allow a lorry to pass. d) Quad bikers driv­ing errat­ic­ally caus­ing a ranger to have to quickly move out their way to avoid col­li­sion — repor­ted to the police. e) Clipped wing of a Park Author­ity vehicle while revers­ing in estate yard. f) Lone work­ing near miss — fail­ure to check buddy avail­ab­il­ity. g) Bumped head while erect­ing gazebo for an event. h) Anoth­er clipped wing mir­ror by anoth­er vehicle on a nar­row track.
2. There were no par­tic­u­lar pat­terns or con­cerns and all acci­dent and incid­ent reports were resolved.

Item 6: Ranger service.

1. AS provided the fol­low­ing update: a) Break­away train­ing and con­flict res­ol­u­tion train­ing will be tak­ing place. b) Nation­al Vis­it­or group has repor­ted more aggres­sion to rangers nation­ally — above train­ing key to sup­port­ing rangers in this regard. c) All sea­son­al rangers will get driver training.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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d) Fire bylaws - an engagement and enforcement procedure will be in place to cover the occasions we will have to enforce the bylaw and how. This will prompt what training will be required. **CS will bring the procedure back to the Health and Safety Committee at its quarter one 2026 meeting.**
e) Fire training scheduled for the Countryside Rangers. It was asked with regards to any staff member supporting extinguishing a fire, how would they decontaminate? **CS and AS to consider and bring back to Health and Safety Committee.**
f) It was asked which staff would be doing this training. CS responded that it would typically be rangers as they are the ones on the ground engaging with the public. ES raised that there are other staff who could be used in a wildfire situation eg peatland staff and that their involvement need not involve direct firefighting but could be being eyes on the ground, spotting the fire. Is there a role for our staff to be involved? **KC to discuss with SMT.**

Item 7: Peat­land matters

1. None oth­er than the ATV incid­ent already dis­cussed. There have also been wel­fare checks on the pro­ject officer involved to give them sup­port as they had been shaken by the accident.

Item 8: Facil­it­ies matters

1. We have now awar­ded a con­tract for the install­a­tion of a backup heat­ing sys­tem. The old oil boil­er will be removed, and an air source heat pump will replace the backup sys­tem. It will go straight into the flow of main heat­ing so will heat all the build­ing. The sys­tem flips to ground source when the bio­mass fails. Should be com­mis­sioned by Christmas.

AOB

1. Our exist­ing Chil­dren in the Office Risk Assess­ment (RA) basic­ally says that chil­dren can­not be in the office under any cir­cum­stances. It’s a very dated RA and applied more with regards the chil­dren of staff. How­ever, with some of the C2030 work involving cre­at­ives and oth­er extern­al part­ners, there have been occa­sions where young chil­dren have been brought into the office and it feels as though we need to amend the risk assess­ment to allow this but also put in place mit­ig­a­tion. This is more inclus­ive and appro­pri­ate for our cur­rent work.

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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1. The risk assess­ment has been revised and is par­tic­u­larly rel­ev­ant for vis­it­ors to the office, who have chil­dren attend­ing the office with them. The key expect­a­tion is that the child will be accom­pan­ied by their par­ent at all times they attend the office, and that if a child becomes unsettled, it is incum­bent on the par­ent to either remove them from the office entirely or accom­pany the child to the Well­being Room until they are settled. The Well­being room is not equipped as a child­care facil­ity but can be used for breast­feed­ing and chan­ging nap­pies. Any staff mem­ber host­ing a par­ent who has their child in attend­ance must make the par­ent aware of this risk assess­ment, and poten­tial hazards.
2. Whilst this risk assess­ment relates more to chil­dren of vis­it­ors to the office, it may also include occa­sion­al vis­its by chil­dren of staff mem­bers. The hybrid work­ing envir­on­ment is such that staff should not be required to bring their chil­dren to the office for par­tic­u­larly long peri­ods of time (ie this risk assess­ment does not replace the expect­a­tion that staff mem­bers will have child care arrange­ments in place for the peri­ods the staff mem­ber attends the office) and the expect­a­tion is that chil­dren of staff mem­bers attend only when there are emer­gen­cies that require short peri­ods of attendance.
3. Health and safety com­mit­tee approved the risk assessment.

Date of next meeting

1. 5 March 2026

Action table

Action	Per­son responsible
24÷22÷25
Devel­op a map to show WiFi coverage	BS, AS PD
Explore shared Garmin device for Conservation	BS
Explore Garmin to Garmin text functionality	BS
Is there some­thing as Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment (SG) level on bio­se­c­ur­ity to cov­er jobs/​locations where vehicle dis­in­fect­ing needs to be considered	BS
CRM Reg­u­la­tions training	ES to send PM a link to the train­ing pro­vider. CS to decide what exact

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Action	Per­son responsible
	train­ing his team require and who in his team need to do that. PM and CS to liaise in this regard
Fire Bylaws Ranger Enforce­ment Procedure	CS to bring to Health and Safety Committee
Fire decon­tam­in­a­tion consideration	CS, AS
Staff involve­ment in wildfires	KC, SMT
9 Septem­ber meeting
PeopleSafe escal­a­tion fail­ure: Meet with Con­ser­va­tion and LM teams to discuss:	BS and MP togeth­er with rel­ev­ant Heads of Ser­vice — in progress
• Three people on escal­a­tion plans
• Per­son­al escal­a­tion plans over team escal­a­tion plans
• PeopleSafe escal­a­tion plan to reflect buddy escal­a­tion plan
• Con­sider roam­ing functionality
• Con­sider Garmin functionality
• Re-famil­i­ar­isa­tion train­ing on PeopleSafe at team level
• Audit on sites accessed to assess sig­nal capacity
PeopleSafe escal­a­tion fail­ure: Mobile Nos on PeopleSafe not land lines	MP/BS — completed
PeopleSafe escal­a­tion fail­ure: IT to ensure all cal­en­dars are access­ible to all staff	BS/LD — completed
PeopleSafe escal­a­tion fail­ure: PeopleSafe tele­phone num­ber to be shared with rel­ev­ant staff for ensur­ing the num­ber is	BS — completed

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Action	Per­son responsible
iden­ti­fied as being PeopleSafe on their phones
PeopleSafe escal­a­tion fail­ure: Ensure line man­ager guid­ance for new staff / return­ing staff cov­ers handovers	PM — completed
PeopleSafe escal­a­tion fail­ure: Lone work­ing wash-up train­ing to be delivered	BS/PD — in progress
PeopleSafe escal­a­tion fail­ure: Report to be dis­cussed at SMT	KC/BS — completed
Update ATV risk assess­ment re trunk roads	CS — completed
Volun­teer man­agers to com­plete Park Author­ity acci­dent and Incid­ent reports	AS — in progress
Garmin to Garmin text mes­sages to be explored	BS/ES — in progress
Check insur­ance re Park Author­ity vehicle tow­ing non-Park Author­ity vehicle	MP — completed
Peat­land Officer two licences on PeopleSafe to be investigated	BC — in progress
PPE policy to be updated	KC — completed
13/05/25 AED train­ing for all staff	First ​“tri­al” train­ing ses­sion delivered 15 Feb­ru­ary. Very well received. BS will roll out for more staff
11/02/25 Pan­ic but­ton in well­being room	BS/MP on going. a few options con­sidered but did not work. Facil­it­ies team to revisit
30/10/24 Was a log kept of staff attend­ing acci­dent and incid­ent reports and Lone work­ing train­ing and do they need a mop up	Dis­cussed as part of the Escal­a­tion Pro­ced­ure Fail­ure report. Still to action a mech­an­isms to monitor

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

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Action	Per­son responsible
30/10/24 Noti­fy fire mar­shals of shed for alarm approach; let staff know that a single out­side alarm does not prompt an evac­u­ation, but the main build­ing alarm does; arrange four-weekly test­ing of shed fire alarms.	BS