Resources Paper 2 - Health and Safety Committee minutes

Resources Com­mit­tee Paper 2 06 Novem­ber 2026 Page 1 of 9

Draft Health and Safety Com­mit­tee Minutes Held at Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity hybrid 10 Septem­ber 2026

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

Apo­lo­gies Beccy Stanton

Item 1: Review of minutes and pre­vi­ous actions

1. Updated in action log. Key dis­cus­sion points: a) Install­a­tion of CCTV has stalled as BS is on long term sick­ness. Not a pri­or­ity for now and can wait till she is back. b) Regard­ing the 4×4 cross­ing water guid­ance doc­u­ment, ES and the team had con­sidered stat­ing ​“use your judge­ment” re going into the water your­self to assess depth, but we feel this is not an appro­pri­ate or safe option, des­pite the fact this is what LANTRA sug­gest. We agreed that it was more robust to simply state ​“Do not go in the water”. ES to fine tune this and the 4×4 driv­ing; and 4×4 recov­ery risk assess­ments and KC then to upload and launch. c) Regard­ing clean­ing of Per­son­al Pro­tec­tion Equip­ment (PPE) worn dur­ing fire train­ing, CS has now spoken with SFRS who have sign­posted him to the com­pany they use. CS to fol­low up with clean­ing com­pany. d) Dis­cus­sion about aggress­ive beha­viours noted through pre­vi­ous Acci­dent and Incid­ent Reports, CS updated com­mit­tee that we have now sent two cases (fire bylaws) to fisc­al office, and in each case the indi­vidu­als did not get

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e) abusive when we took their details. These cases involved were one in Deeside where the folks concerned admitted their fire had been lit for a couple of nights; and one at Glenmore campsite (after the wildfire incident) where smouldering embers were found so fire had likely been through the night.
    CS confirmed that the lone working session had been done with the Access team. He noted that through this, folks had realised that driving alone was also lone working and suggested a guidance note about this particularly as winter is approaching. CS to write this guidance note
f) Lockbox for peatland team has not progresses due to BS being off sick but current situation works fine so this can wait.
g) MP provided an update on the CHUBB fire inspection. He reported that it went well with just a few minor issues, eg location of external bins right by fire escape, but this is dictated by Highland Council so MP will speak with them re moving; all door hinges with the exception of extension doors were flagged for replacing as they don't have the CE stamp on them and are therefore not safety recognised and don't comply with fire regulations. This is required to be able to evidence that they will withhold elements of a fire door. AS suggested, we try and argue that this is an old building and see if there is a caveat which we may be able to rely on in this situation to not have to replace the hinges. MP to discuss with CHUBB, and if no caveat to rely on, to arrange replacements with joiners; they also indicated same issue with glass, but the builder will provide a safety data sheet for glass. MP to chase up.

Item 2: Review of Aber­nethy and Glen­more Wild­fire Doc­u­ments 2026

1. There were a series of risk assess­ments and guid­ance doc­u­ments pulled togeth­er to sup­port staff activ­it­ies man­aging the wild­fire incid­ent, cov­er­ing eg drone pilot­ing and 4×4 sup­port; drone spot­ter guid­ance, drone oper­at­or stand­ard oper­at­ing pro­ced­ure. Although the incid­ent was now largely over, it was felt appro­pri­ate for the Health and Safety Com­mit­tee to con­sider these doc­u­ments, in terms of sup­port­ing poten­tial future implementation.
2. Dis­cus­sion points were: a) The doc­u­ments were good and robust and met the need at the time.

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b) This incident has prompted the need for wider discussion about risk management planning for when similar situations occur again.
c) Agreement to sign off these documents as being fit for purpose for the 2026 incident, but that they will need to be reviewed, double checked and adapted for future incidents. Nevertheless, they are a good baseline for future incidents.
d) Awareness that Grant is already coordinating a "lessons learnt" review for development of a risk resilience approach/protocol going forward.
e) Whilst SFRS took responsibility for risk assessments and procedures for volunteers and staff of other organisations supporting this incident, recognition that key for the Park Authority is our duty of care is to our staff. To this end, it was suggested there needs to be feedback to SRFS about their procedures not being fit for purpose (eg volunteer / officer sign in process). Agreed though this was not the responsibility of the Park Authority's Health and Safety Committee but the expectation that this would come out of the national inquiry and will also be visible in our own protocol / review that Grant is leading.
f) It was asked how the wider staff group can contribute to this review - eg peatland team many of whom were heavily involved in the incident. CS said he would take this question back to Grant, and it was agreed that the Health and Safety Committee should have sight of the emerging protocol / review. CS to action.
g) There was a sense at the time that some staff were very enthusiastic about setting a baseline of everything we gave as a minimum we give each time - eg lots of staff now want to do 4x4 training or Brightsparks firefighting training even though that doesn't sit within their job remit or is even appropriate for their role - they just want to be able to assist such incidents. So there needs to be something in the protocol about where the organisation sees staff in future involvement on such incidents and how we might prepare them for that involvement.
h) It was agreed that we cannot expect our rangers to be the fourth emergency service. We therefore need clarity of the various agencies' responsibilities in these incidents and where and when our assistance is required. It was felt that the agencies were abdicating responsibility to the Park Authority's drone pilots, where it was felt that our support should only be where agencies have a gap ie we should not be expected to backfill responsibility where the

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i) agencies have a responsibility to do something, and this point should be made clear to our staff
    Brightsparks firefighting training was also discussed and the Health and Safety Committee did not support general staff getting this training as key to the ability to effectively fight fires is practical experience as well as the formal training course (as highlighted by the trainers themselves) and this is not something our staff are likely (or expected) to get. Nevertheless, we suggested that there may be alternative firefighting training explored that may be appropriate for our staff. CS to take these points back to Grant, as he also sits on the review group.

Item 3: Acci­dent and Incid­ent Reports

1. Noted that there have been six Acci­dent and Incid­ent Reports in the report­ing peri­od, in com­par­is­on the eight in the pre­vi­ous report­ing peri­od and five in the report­ing peri­od before that. The incid­ents were as fol­lows: a) Front door of exten­sion (and there­fore a fire exit) get­ting stuck closed. b) Rangers can across a fam­ily camp­ing with a fire — unat­ten­ded chil­dren at the fire and poten­tial safe­guard­ing mat­ter. c) Clipped wing mir­ror of fleet vehicle. d) Mem­ber of the pub­lic col­lapsing at the Grant­own show. e) Punc­ture of tyre on fleet vehicle. f) Rangers hav­ing to deal with aggress­ive beha­viour from mem­ber of pub­lic asked to park his vehicle else­where as Cam­bus Bridge car park was full
2. There was a dis­cus­sion about the clipped wing mir­ror incid­ent. A staff mem­ber was driv­ing the Land Cruis­er. The road nar­rows on the bend. Staff mem­ber was fully with­in their own side of the road, trav­el­ling at approx­im­ately 20mph, when a camper van came around the corner from the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion. Staff mem­ber moved fur­ther over onto the verge to allow the camper van to pass safely. As the camper van came past, its wing mir­ror clipped the wing mir­ror of the Land Cruis­er. Our insur­ance asked if our vehicle was sta­tion­ary, in which case liab­il­ity lay with the driver of the oth­er vehicle, or if our vehicle was mov­ing, we would be liable, or split liab­il­ity if both vehicles mov­ing. Our staff mem­ber did not stop on this occa­sion, so it was sug­ges­ted we add nar­rat­ive to the driv­ing at work risk assess­ment to advise staff to stop in these cir­cum­stances to allow the oth­er vehicle to pass — ie pull over if pos­sible. KC to action.

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Item 6: Ranger service.

1. AS advised that volun­teer rangers had been draf­ted to sup­port the wild­fire incid­ent but were at all times kept away from the fire.
2. There had been a couple of incid­ents in the after­math at Glen­more with folks vent­ing griev­ances to the volun­teer rangers about being kept away from the fire and express­ing that the cor­dons that were in place impinged upon their rights. AS acknow­ledged that this is some­thing the volun­teer rangers are not typ­ic­ally exposed to. He said we will rein­force in their train­ing how to deal with these types of situations.
3. CS poin­ted out that as the access author­ity the exclu­sion zone is an access author­ity mat­ter for people’s safety as per S15 of the Land Reform Act. He said that we are review­ing the exclu­sion zone and print­ing revised maps weekly

Item 7: Peat­land matters

1. Noth­ing to report

Item 8: Facil­it­ies matters 10​.MP repor­ted that there were a few occa­sions were folk had not signed in / out which was caus­ing issues for the clean­ers and also impact on out of hours checks MP does on the build­ing. KC to draft a post for Eolas remind­ing staff of require­ment to sign in / out.

AOB

1. None

Date of next meeting 10 Decem­ber 2026

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Action table | Action | Per­son respons­ible | | — -| — -| | 10/09/26 | | | Fine tune 4×4 doc­u­ments then to upload and launch | ES and KC | | fol­low up with SFRS recom­men­ded clean­ing com­pany for fire­fight­ing PPE laun­dry. | CS | | Guid­ance notes about lone work­ing driv­ing in winter | CS | | Approach HC to move loc­a­tion of extern­al waste bins | MP | | Dis­cuss with CHUBB fire report con­tract­ors’ poten­tial caveat re fire door hinges | MP | | Chase build­ers for safety data sheet for glass | MP | | Take to Grant the Health and Safety Com­mit­tee recom­mend­a­tion about sight of risk man­age­ment pro­to­cols, and require­ments to involve staff more broadly in the review. and poten­tial to explore suit­able fire train­ing for staff that meets the needs of the pro­tocol. | CS | | Update driv­ing risk assess­ment re stop­ping vehicle on nar­row roads to allow oth­ers to pass. | KC | | Eolas post remind­ing staff to sign in/​out | KC | | Action | Per­son respons­ible | | 11/06/26 | | | An ​“arrive clean, leave clean”” approach is to be added to site vis­it RA | BS | | remind staff about wear­ing lan­yards and to ensure vis­it­ors do so as well and take | KC — action completed |

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Action	Per­son responsible
recom­mend­a­tion about installing CCTV to SMT
Spec up cost of 4 CCTV cameras.	BS
Add para­met­ers re water depth	ES — action completed
Check and provide nar­rat­ive about weath­er forecast	AS — action completed
Amend to make para­met­ers very clear re wad­ing in water	ES — action completed
Card in vehicles re air intake	BS
Add to the cor­por­ate site vis­it risk assess­ment that staff should ​“at all times be doing dynam­ic risk assessments	BS
Liaise with SFRS re decon­tam­in­a­tion laundry	CS
Ensure Con­flict Res­ol­u­tion train­ing includes how to handle inap­pro­pri­ate com­ments from the public	AS — action completed
Lone work­ing train­ing for Access team	BS — action completed
Remind folks to report equip­ment breakages	BS — action completed
Lam­in­ated cards in all meet­ing rooms with details of nearest fire exits, alarm times etc	BS
Explore get­ting a Faraday lock­box which block sig­nal. In the inter­im. Con­tin­ue exist­ing prac­tice where key is left in a place know by all the team	ES/BS
10/03/26 — all actions competed
24÷22÷25
Devel­op a map to show wifi coverage	BS, AS PD — Still in progress

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Action	Per­son responsible
Explore shared Garmin device for Conservation	BS — Still in progress
Is there some­thing as SG level on bio­se­c­ur­ity to cov­er jobs/​locations where vehicle dis­in­fect­ing needs to be considered	BS — Still in progress
CDM Regs training	ES has sent PM a link to the train­ing pro­vider. CS still 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
9 Septem­ber meeting
PeopleSafe escal­a­tion fail­ure: Meet with Con­ser­va­tion and LM teams to dis­cuss: • 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	BS and MP togeth­er with rel­ev­ant Heads of Ser­vice — action completed
PeopleSafe escal­a­tion fail­ure: Lone work­ing wash-up train­ing to be delivered	BS/PD — in progress

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Action	Per­son responsible
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 — action completed
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 we need a mop up.	Dis­cussed as part of the Escal­a­tion Pro­ced­ure Fail­ure report. Still to action a mech­an­ism to monitor
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 4‑weekly test­ing of shed fire alarms.	BS — action completed