The CCW/NRW lease with the Mynydd Llangattock landowners, which conferred "a right of control over the caves within the demised premises" had expired when I questioned NRW on this ten years ago having taken over the C&A role in the then Cambrian Caving Council (now Caving Wales) and NRW were trying to renew their lease. I claimed that NRW no longer had any written agreement, but they claimed that they did on the dubious basis (IMHO) of having expired leases and the Beaufort Estate not challenging that situation. CCW/NRW set up the MLCMAC only to "advise" them on cave management. MLCMAC has itself never managed the caves. The caves on BE land that are outside of the formerly leased area, e.g. Daren Cilau and OCAF, have never been managed by anyone other than their ultimate landowner, and that is still the case.
Reading between the lines of recent conversations with NRW, it seems their present relations with the estate are not going too smoothly, so I imagine there is no lease in place for the "demised premises" - which is the Craig-y-Cilau National Nature Reserve - and there never will be again, and therefore these "premises" are not "demised" any longer and the estate has taken back full control of them.
CW has had a couple of meetings with the estate and the ball is in their court to propose a written agreement and none has been forthcoming. That said, the Estate seems to be happy with an informal permissive access arrangement so that cavers can access the caves on the estate's land provided that they act "responsibly". However, where caves are SSSIs then the landowner has a duty to consult NRW on any changes which amount to PDOs and is fully accountable for the care of the caves.
NRW told me that it does not know who made and fitted the cave gates or whether the estate was consulted. In fact CCW/NRW made and fitted some of them and the others were done by cavers seeking to protect the caves in which they had a personal interest.
NRW in effect shutdown the MLCMAC when it willingly handed over its stock of spare padlocks and keys to the cavers on their former committee and showed them the door without any plan whatsoever in place for future cave management or the landowner advice function.
Obviously something had to be done so CW has been hosting MLCMAC so that it has access to funds, banking, internet facilities etc, but CW is not directing or managing the MLCMAC and it appoints its own members. All that exists now is permissive access to bona fide insured cavers granted by the landowner who is being advised by MLCMAC as an advisory committee on how things would best be run and the caves cared for. MLCMAC has done away with the former CCW permit system and been more liberal about key distribution but otherwise the system is much the same as it was when NRW controlled it and appointed its members who thus became "CCW/NRW Wardens" within the meaning of S.18 of the CROW Act.
Readers might feel this is a bit loose or even bizarre, but this kind of loose arrangement is the norm. In general terms, landowner L is persuaded by cavers C to grant permissive access for cavers at large (subject to T&Cs which vary from place to place) and C disseminates that access information so that visitors V know how to conduct themselves correctly, but C has not assumed control from L in the sense that the landowner has conferred a legal right of control of their premises to C (e.g. via a property deed, lease or other form of contract). Typically L is a farmer (such as at Little Neath River Cave) but sometimes L can be big like the MOD (Ogof Gofan) or Beaufort Estate (Llangattock caves) or the National Park (Porth yr Ogof) or Welsh Water (Pwll Dwfn). There is no management or control by cavers or caving organisations at any of the above locations.
I can assure anyone who has doubts that C&A is a big job. For example just setting up the Ogof Gofan access system and being the conduit for cavers to obtain landowner permits for exclusive access to this small cave on the date of their choice, handling any reports they in due course feed back, liaison meetings with the landowner's representatives, has expanded that area of my inbox to 750 messages and counting.
