To get the mines access agreement up and running we need to write site risk assessments and to supply these to NRW for approval before our new system can go live. We hope to have sufficient written up and agreed so that trips into the Parc and Rhiwbach mines can take place on the CCC AGM weekend.
My article in the recent CCC newsletter made it clear, I hoped, that the new company is an independent legal entity that exists to avoid present and future CCC officers having to embrace unacceptable legal risks personally in operating land access agreements. CCC is an unincorporated body and its executive members are all jointly and severally liable for whatever CCC does wrong. In the event of a legal compensation claim, the CCC officers will be the initial targets, but the member clubs of CCC would also be at risk. Having a limited company instead to hold the access agreements avoids all of that risk falling on private individuals and caving clubs which, like CCC, are usually unincorporated with joint and several liability too.
It follows that CCC can have no control over such a company, otherwise it would be CCC in disguise and thus a sham. By all means, we can discuss where we have got to with this access strategy at the upcoming AGM, and think about the best future directions, but CCC cannot hold a vote on whether the company should continue to exist, or be wound up, or dictate how it operates. That is for its directors to decide because the buck stops with them and only they are accountable at law.
Our new company is only interested in creating brand new access agreements, not in taking over or influencing any existing arrangements. We think our approach best suits those landowners that insist on a heavy-weight solicitor-written solid legal agreements, like a water company or major landowner or government would, and indeed did in the case of the mines.
Now, it just so happens that a certain big water company has stopped access into a certain big cave in South Wales, and we would like to get it opened up again. I have already held informal discussions with them, and found out that it will need another weighty legal access agreement via solicitors, and useful to have a recommendation from NRW that the new mines access company is working well from their perspective. This will be top of the access to-do list once the mines agreement has provided enough evidence of success to build on.
As well as at known underground sites where legal access is denied, I can see that the new company might assist with obtaining formal permission for digging and cave prospecting too.
So can I appeal to everyone to support our aims to get more caving and discovery done in future years in a way that satisfies even the most demanding of landowners while containing the risks for the handful of individuals who are running the access systems through which the wider caving and mine exploring community will greatly benefit.
Stuart France
Cave Access Ltd
