Resources Committee - Paper 3

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Draft Health and Safety Com­mit­tee Minutes Held at Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity office, Grant­own-on-Spey Hybrid 11 Feb­ru­ary 2025 at 11.30am

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

Joined by Pat Dou­glass (PD) Adam Street-Smith (ASS) — Recre­ation and Access Manager

Apo­lo­gies None.

Item 1: Review of minutes and pre­vi­ous actions

1. Driv­ing at Work Policy α) Seni­or Man­age­ment Team (SMT) have approved the changes, and the revised policy will go to Staff Con­sultat­ive For­um (SCF) in March. b) New Driver Log has been included in new join­er pro­ced­ure. c) Oper­a­tion­al Man­age­ment Group (OMG) still to con­sider if any roles oth­er than Ranger posts require advanced driver train­ing. KC and CS to action

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d) Sea­son­al Ranger job descrip­tion has been amended to include addi­tion­al nar­rat­ive about driv­ing for work safety, and Induc­tion brief­ing has been amended to Include enhanced Inform­a­tion about driv­ing for work.

1. Sexu­al har­ass­ment legis­la­tion α) Risk assess­ment has been tabled at this meet­ing. b) Ranger team will do own risk assess­ment based on the one agreed at this meeting.
2. Nation­al Soci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cruelty to Chil­dren (NSP­CC) train­ing α) PM has arranged this train­ing as well as safe­guard­ing train­ing for key staff.
3. Volun­teer Ranger knives risk assess­ment- AS con­firmed this has been done.
4. Fire Mar­shall pro­ced­ures regard­ing shed alarm in progress.

Item 2: C2030 Bike pro­ject (PD presented)

1. PD explained that the pro­ject involves pro­cur­ing a fleet of bikes for com­munity hubs in Bal­later, Grant­own-on-Spey and Glen­more Forest Park. The Park Author­ity will own the bikes, but they will be asset trans­ferred to the com­munity after two- to-three years. Pro­ject also involves pro­vi­sion of bikes for staff to use. There is a sep­ar­ate pro­cure­ment exer­cise to award a main­ten­ance con­tract, which should involve a book­ing sys­tem and sys­tem for report­ing faults. The fol­low­ing mat­ters were dis­cussed: α) Pub­lic will not be charged for use of bikes. Hubs will be man­aged by volun­teers. b) Health and Safety Com­mit­tee recom­men­ded that bikes should be handed to users by the volun­teer, rather than just leav­ing bikes at pick-up points. In this way, volun­teer can pass on key safety Inform­a­tion. c) Health and Safety Com­mit­tee sug­ges­ted that as a min­im­um users should be required to sign a mem­ber­ship agree­ment set­ting out their per­son­al respons­ib­il­it­ies for using hel­mets, check­ing bikes before use etc. PD to devel­op mem­ber­ship agree­ment to bring back to Health and Safety Com­mit­tee. d) With regards fleet of bikes for staff use, it was agreed that for now they could be stored in the new bike shed at rear of num­ber 16, but in a demarc­ated area

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e) that is sep­ar­ate from area for use of staff-owned bike stor­age. Ulti­mately though the second half of the shed will be ear­marked for the fleet bikes, and PD will arrange for fund­ing for the Install­a­tion of e‑charge points Health and Safety Com­mit­tee recom­men­ded the need for an oper­at­ing sys­tem for staff for use of fleet bikes, which should include a risk assess­ment and oth­er key safety guid­ance (not dis­sim­il­ar to the pro­ced­ures set out for use of pool cars). PD to devel­op and bring back to Health and Safety Com­mit­tee. Health and Safety Com­mit­tee also recom­men­ded that there needs to be con­sid­er­a­tion about insur­ance. PD to action.

Item 3: Path inspec­tion pro­to­cols (ASS presented)

1. ASS explained that the Park Author­ity has dir­ect respons­ib­il­ity of a num­ber of paths and install­a­tions in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park, this includes the Spey­side Way, Snow Roads install­a­tions and a num­ber of paths sub­ject to an access agree­ment secured by Park Author­ity staff includ­ing the Old Log­ging Way and Charter Chest Path. In addi­tion to these paths as an ori­gin­al mem­ber of the Upper Deeside Access Trust, lat­terly the Cairngorms Out­door Access Trust and now Out­door Access Trust of Scot­land (OATS) there are a num­ber of paths that the Park Author­ity has inher­ited a degree of man­age­ment over in order to secure long term value of money for ini­tial pub­lic invest­ment. This largely relates to annu­al veget­a­tion main­ten­ance. In order to ensure pub­lic safety and leg­al com­pli­ance, the Park Author­ity has developed an inspec­tion and report­ing sys­tem that includes areas of activ­ity each of which includes sup­port­ing actions. ASS seek­ing Health and Safety Com­mit­tee views on this sys­tem. The fol­low­ing points were dis­cussed: a) Recog­ni­tion that we are not seek­ing to deliv­er a risk-free envir­on­ment and that recre­ation in out­doors does carry a degree of risk. How­ever, the Scot­tish Out­door Access Code (SOAC) sets out a require­ment for people to take care and act respons­ibly for how they enjoy the out­doors. Nev­er­the­less, all land man­agers has to ensure people can enjoy the out­doors safely. b) This pro­tocol is largely based on and an exten­sion of the pro­to­cols that Health and Safety Com­mit­tee have already seen regard­ing the Snowroad install­a­tions and Infra­struc­ture. c) Pro­pos­al advoc­ates for each asset to have a loc­a­tion risk assess­ment. Pro­pos­al is to pull togeth­er the loc­a­tion risk assess­ments for all the assets and then have annu­al visu­al inspec­tions of the assets by the ranger and access teams fol­lowed by a pro­cess to report and action any issues.

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d) Some assets will require more pro­fes­sion­al inspec­tions eg bridges and trees. ASS explained that these inspec­tions by trained con­tract­ors will identi­fy planned, pre­vent­at­ive (le future) main­ten­ance actions as well as Imme­di­ate ones required. e) ASS asked if Health and Safety Com­mit­tee felt this pro­tocol paper presen­ted an appro­pri­ate response to man­aging pub­lic safety at these assets, and if where a land own­er has a con­tract to man­age an asset, do we see and stick with their risk assess­ment or duplic­ate It with our own. f) Health and Safety Com­mit­tee con­sidered the paper to be a broadly good response but sug­ges­ted that the key is con­sist­ency — if there is a spe­cif­ic régime of inspec­tion we can ask part­ners to do the inspec­tions as long as there is a clear pro forma for them to fol­low so then all part­ners are report­ing on the same things. g) Sug­ges­tion that there needs to be a baseline sur­vey to see what baseline con­di­tion of assets. h) Health and Safety Com­mit­tee sug­ges­ted that it should be a con­di­tion of the land man­ager main­ten­ance con­tract that the land man­ager does the risk assess­ment and shares it with the Park Author­ity, rather than us duplic­ate the work. i) It was sug­ges­ted that the team see what oth­ers are doing in this regard, eg Forestry and Land Scot­land (FLS). We need integ­rated sys­tems with con­sist­ent records, the right com­pet­ent people to do the right Inspec­tions. It was explained that much of this is already in place, and that this doc­u­ment is simply adding to exist­ing pro­to­cols. j) It was agreed that Health and Safety Com­mit­tee as an advis­ory com­mit­tee can and should have over­sight of and com­ment on this, but the pro­tocol and asso­ci­ated risk register should ulti­mately be viewed and signed off by SMT. ASS and CS to take this to SMT

Item 4: Health and Safety Com­mit­tee Policy

1. KC explained that this policy had been moved to Share­Point and as a res­ult all the links were broken. She had spent some time updat­ing the links but also the nar­rat­ive as it was noted the policy had not been updated since 2022. This is the over­arch­ing Health and Safety Com­mit­tee Policy that all new staff are expec­ted to read and which has to be signed off by the CEO as account­able officer. Giv­en the

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update is so late and required addi­tion­al nar­rat­ive, It will be going to SMT for sign off In Feb­ru­ary. Health and Safety Com­mit­tee were asked for any com­ments: α) It was noted that there was noth­ing in the policy about work­ing with vul­ner­able people which is a sig­ni­fic­ant risk for key staff. KC to add link to Work­ing with Vul­ner­able People policy. b) It should be set out expli­citly that the role of the Health and Safety Com­mit­tee is an advis­ory one, rather than a decision mak­ing one. KC to action and then to cir­cu­late to SMT.

Item 5: To dis­cuss recent incid­ent of mem­ber of staff hav­ing a heart attack at work

1. Sev­er­al mem­bers of the Health and Safety Com­mit­tee were involved in the event and com­men­ted on how well the situ­ation was handled by staff and first aid­ers, under very stress­ful cir­cum­stances. Nev­er­the­less, it was acknow­ledged that there were some les­sons to be learnt, and the pur­pose of this dis­cus­sion was to see where we could tight­en things up. The fol­low­ing was noted: α) We have now put blister packs of aspir­in in all first aid kits that are loc­ated through­out the build­ing and in the Bal­later office and the event grab packs. BS to make sure first aid kits in pool cars also updated. b) Noted that some staff said they did not know we had a defib­ril­lat­or, or where it was loc­ated (this des­pite Eolas post to staff advising accord­ingly and details about this on the Facil­it­ies page of Eolas, and this is also included in the tour for all new staff). Fol­low­ing the incid­ent, the next well­being Wed­nes­day post was about heart attacks, and it again included inform­a­tion about the loc­a­tion and use of the defib­ril­lat­or. c) Agreed the need to devel­op a pro forma (hard copy on a clip board) where attend­ing first aid­er could cap­ture key ​“emer­gency pro­ced­ure” details that are crit­ic­al in such an incid­ent, and which would typ­ic­ally be required by para­med­ics. BS to devel­op emer­gency pro­ced­ure pro forma for loc­a­tion through­out build­ing. d) We dis­cussed best way to make health inform­a­tion about staff access­ible to first aid­ers. Cur­rently it Is on PeopleHR but can be clunky to access (need two factor authen­tic­a­tion so takes time). Pip to Invest­ig­ate with Paul If this can be accessed on Share­Point but locked down so only first aid­ers can see it

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e) The well­being room was dis­cussed — it is not only a med­ic­al room but also a quiet space for staff who need it. As such, we want it to be wel­com­ing space that is not sterile. How­ever, we agreed some changes are required: i. The chaise lounge is being replaced with a fully reclin­ing arm­chair with arm rests (the incid­ent iden­ti­fied the need for an indi­vidu­al to be able to rest their arms, and also have their feet up, and poten­tially head up too). ii. We have now placed paper cups in there for staff to access water (there is a sink in the room but there were no vent­ricles for hold­ing the water). iii. We will put a poster in the room to advise where the defib is loc­ated (Facil­it­ies to action). iv. We will instal a pan­ic but­ton for the room in case any­one is there on their own and their con­di­tion deteri­or­ates — facil­it­ies to action. v. We will change the lock in the room to more eas­ily facil­it­ate access from out­side — facil­it­ies to action. f) We are going to put out more posters around the build­ing of who the first aid­ers are, and are also explor­ing adding to the name list that appears on the sign-in app who the first aid­ers are, so any­one can see via the app the first aid­ers who are in the build­ing at a giv­en time (this point was added fol­low­ing a dis­cus­sion with the facil­it­ies team). BS to action.

Item 6: Sexu­al Har­ass­ment Risk Assessment

1. KC tabled this doc­u­ment, which is a require­ment for all organ­isa­tions, fol­low­ing the leg­al changes that came into effect in Octo­ber 2024 regard­ing require­ment of organ­isa­tions to pro­act­ively pre­vent sexu­al har­ass­ment. The fol­low­ing com­ments were made: α) Second bul­let regard­ing lone work­ing, should add that we already provide rangers with de-escal­a­tion train­ing. b) Fourth bul­let regard­ing social media, should add in fourth column that we will provide sup­port to staff who have been bul­lied via social media. c) KC to action above changes and then table the risk assess­ment with SMT for sign off.

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Item 7: Oper­at­ing pro­ced­ures for led bike rides (CS presented)

1. CS explained that this doc­u­ment sets out the sys­tems Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity has agreed for man­aging led cycle rides in a safe man­ner. It applied to any­one lead­ing a bike ride on behalf of the Park Author­ity. It mir­rors much of what is set out in the Act­ive Travel risk assess­ment. Key points dis­cussed: α) Health and Safety Com­mit­tee agreed with the pro­pos­al that Cycle ride lead­er train­ing and also two-day out­door first aid is required for any­one to lead a ride on behalf of the Park Author­ity (and PVG check if rid­ing with chil­dren and / or vul­ner­able adults). b) Ratios of lead­er to par­ti­cipants is import­ant. If an adult sup­port­ing the ride is not form­ally trained (eg a par­ent), they will be con­sidered a par­ti­cipant for ratio pur­poses. c) Miss­ing is risk assess­ment, and guid­ance about on-road oper­a­tions. CS and Anna Ronayne to devel­op a risk assess­ment and on-road guid­ance as part of this pro­ced­ure to come back to Health and Safety Com­mit­tee. There­after, to be taken to SMT for sign off and broad­er distribution.

Item 8: Acci­dent and Incid­ent Reports

1. Noted that there have been 13 acci­dents and incid­ents in the report­ing peri­od, this is a clear sign: α) That the Share­Point acci­dent and incid­ent report form is a much sim­pler way to log incid­ents; and b) That incid­ents were pre­vi­ously under-reported.

2. The Incid­ents were as fol­lows: a) Trav­el­ling towards Crom­dale bridge from Grant­own. To go onto the bridge, you must imme­di­ately nav­ig­ate a tight left hand bend. Just before the employ­ee got onto the bridge they braked as there was a car com­ing the oth­er way that they did not see in their ini­tial check. The road was covered in leaves and damp, so the van wheels lost grip and it slid into a wall bor­der­ing the entrance to the bridge, impact­ing on the driver side of the van. Dam­age to driver side bump­er and wheel arch pan­els, as well as the head lamp cov­er being smashed. No oth­er per­sons involved and no dam­age to the wall with only paint marks from the van. Invest­ig­a­tion iden­ti­fied that that the relevant

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team will be reminded to be very aware of road con­di­tions and to drive accord­ingly. b) Staff mem­ber found a tick on them­self when they came into the office after a walk in the woods. The acci­dent and incid­ent report form was com­pleted due to the fact thy used the work first aid kit to remove the tick and clean the bite. No fur­ther action. c) When rais­ing the stand­ing desk, staff member’s thumb got caught between the spindle handle and the desk, nail got caught and tore. Fol­low­ing invest­ig­a­tion, WD40 was sprayed on the mech­an­ism. Desk is old and in line to be replaced in due course. Until then, a repeat is unlikely and is not ser­i­ous, so the desk may remain in use. d) Dam­age to pool car after it made con­tact with a low boulder in the site car park that couldn’t be seen from the driver pos­i­tion. Fol­low­ing invest­ig­a­tion, Ranger Team will be made aware of this par­tic­u­lar haz­ard. Ranger Man­ager will speak with Nature Scot about remov­al of the rock. e) Employ­ee was walk­ing on the track lead­ing from Glen­more Lodge to the Green Lochan. They passed a fam­ily of four with a small dog on a long extend­able lead. They passed them on a wide stretch of the path. As they passed, without any warn­ing or sign that it was going to act, the dog ran across the path at them, jumped up and bit them on my upper leg. Fol­low­ing invest­ig­a­tion, it was agreed to review Stand­ard Oper­at­ing Pro­ced­ure (SOP) regard­ing dan­ger­ous dogs / anim­als and actions to be taken if bit­ten by a dog. Rangers will be made aware of pos­sib­il­ity of such incid­ents at pre- sea­son brief­ing. f) Employ­ee was walk­ing through from next to num­ber 14 when the fire door closed on them, hit­ting my arm, wrist and shoulder. Invest­ig­a­tion iden­ti­fied that the noise emit­ted by the uphol­stery clean­er that was being used to clean an office chair in the vicin­ity was picked up by the fire sys­tem as being a fire alarm, which there­fore promp­ted the door to close. We con­sider this to have been an unavoid­able and ​“freak” incid­ent. How­ever, going for­ward, we will con­sider noises by any extern­al kit we may be using. g) Mem­ber of staff and two part­ner col­league were approached by a res­id­ent with his dog. He imme­di­ately star­ted shout­ing and swear­ing at them but pro­ceeded to tar­get and swear at our employ­ee once he real­ised, they with the Park Author­ity. Invest­ig­at­ing officer con­cluded that as this type of action by a mem­ber of the pub­lic is unpre­dict­able it is unlikely that any spe­cif­ic future

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occur­rences could be fore­seen but they may still hap­pen. It is pos­sible that mem­bers of staff could be asked not to go out alone or not to wear branded cloth­ing that iden­ti­fies them as Park Author­ity staff, but this would seem to be dis­pro­por­tion­ate to the like­li­hood of an incid­ent. No addi­tion­al action taken but it is worth not­ing the value of train­ing that staff receive pri­or to going out eg in dees­cal­at­ing con­flicts which the employ­ee received. This could be con­sidered for oth­ers who under­take on-site activ­it­ies. h) Employ­ee was walk­ing down the stairs of num­ber 16 and their ankle gave way on the bot­tom step, and they fell to the floor in the hall­way. No action isol­ated incid­ent but employ­ee reminded to take care and try not be too ​“speedy”. i) Work exper­i­ence young per­son was tak­ing a folder apart when the met­al bind­er cut their fin­ger. Man­ager had giv­en clear instruc­tions. Isol­ated incid­ent. no remedi­al action required. j) In wood­land car park, employ­ee was revers­ing slowly to park. Hilux bumps into parked vehicle that they missed in blind spots and side mir­rors. No dam­age cause to Hilux. Mem­ber of public’s vehicle has cracked below right brake light in the plastic bump­er. Acci­dent repor­ted to facil­it­ies as there was an insur­ance claim involved. Employ­ee reminded to be more aware of the sur­round­ings. Make use of the revers­ing and all-round cam­era tech­no­logy. k) Heart attack incid­ent and asso­ci­ated incid­ent repor­ted regard­ing chaise longue tip­ping back and employ­ee fall­ing to ground. Repor­ted on above. l) Employ­ee walk­ing from pool car area at side of exten­sion. Left foot slipped on muddy sec­tion at entrance to car park. Missed hit­ting head on stone by small mar­gin, passerby helped them up. Invest­ig­a­tion iden­ti­fied that weath­er con­di­tions were the main con­trib­ut­or, rain wash­ing down mud from fur­ther up the road­side, the snow and ice had just melted from this area leav­ing a thick patch of mud. As a res­ult, we mon­itored this area and ask the land­scaper to also keep an eye on this area and clear any build up.

Item 9: Ranger ser­vices matters

1. Safe­guard­ing train­ing is in place for all rangers and green health link workers.

2. Ranger stor­age space on top floor num­ber 16 raised as an issue. Facil­it­ies will invest­ig­ate oth­er stor­age options, and rangers to ensure pri­or­ity kit is loc­ate in down­stairs shed.

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1. Old, branded kit is tak­ing up a lot of stor­age space. KC to ask SMT what we should do with such kit, that can­not be used by staff.

Item 10: Peat­land team matters

1. Noth­ing raised.

Item 11: Facil­it­ies matters

1. Noted that and acci­dent and incid­ent report involving dam­age to a pool car has recently been com­pleted, but it was two days after the incid­ent which hampered invest­ig­a­tion and remedi­al action. Staff to be reminded of need to report as soon as possible.

AOCB

1. It was asked if all staff should be giv­en basic first aid course — not at the level that trained first aid­ers receive but just the basics. Agreed that AS will broach this with the rangers who do com­pre­hens­ive first aid train­ing to con­sider deliv­er­ing this in-house.

Date of next meeting

1. The next meet­ing will take place on 13 May 2025.

Action table | Action | Respons­ible per­son and status | | —- | —- | | Bike pro­ject user ​“mem­ber­ship agree­ment” to be developed and brought back to H&SC | Pat D | | Oper­at­ing sys­tem for staff use of fleet bikes to be developed and brought back to H&SC | Pat D | | Con­sid­er­a­tion of insur­ance for staff fleet bike use | Pat D | | Path inspec­tion pro­tocol and asso­ci­ated risk register should to be viewed and signed off by SMT | ASS and CS | | Addi­tion if link to PVG Policy to H&S Policy | KC |

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| H&S Policy to be taken to SMT for sign off | KC | | Aspir­in to be included in 1^st aid kits in fleet vehicles | BS | | Emer­gency Pro­ced­ure Pro Forma to be developed | BS | | Staff health details to be loc­ated on lock down Share­Point site access­ible only to 1^st aid­ers | PM with Paul D | | Poster in well­being room to advise staff where the defib­ril­lat­or is loc­ated | BS/MP | | Pan­ic but­ton in well­being room | BS/MP | | Change door lock in well­being room | BS/MP | | More posters around the build­ing about who the 1^st aid­ers are and also update sign-in app with 1^st aid­er details then let staff know about this via Eolas | BS | | Action addi­tions to Sexu­al har­ass­ment RA and pass to SMT for sign off | KC | | Devel­op a risk assess­ment and on-road guid­ance as part of the Led Bike Ride pro­ced­ure to come back to H&SC. There­after, to be taken to SMT for sign off and broad­er dis­tri­bu­tion. | Anna R and CS | | Decision to be taken by SMT on how to dis­pose of old branded cor­por­ate cloth­ing | KC take to SMT | | Dis­cuss with rangers’ capa­city to deliv­er bite sized train­ing to staff on basic 1^st aid | AS | | 30/10/24 Was a log kept of staff attend­ing A&IR and Lone work­ing train­ing and do e need a mop up | KC and Paul D | | 30/10/24 OMG to con­sider which staff (oth­er than rangers) should be put for­ward for Advanced driver train­ing | CS and KC | | 30/10/24 Ranger team sex har­ass­ment RA to be under­taken, and also to be included in Green Health Key Work­ers Safe Sys­tems pro­ced­ures | AS |