Hello everyone
Needless to say that the CNCC have been following this thread and have had discussions outside of it too. We have reason to believe that these metal 'steps' were installed with the best of intentions and possibly out of a misunderstanding. There is certainly no need for any witch hunt. The installer has kindly agreed to perform the necessary work to remove them and repair the damage as best as possible if this is the wish of the CNCC Committee.
The general feeling within the CNCC Officers at the moment is that they should be removed; based mostly on the grounds that they are not stainless steel and may, in time, result in a rust streak down the cave walls which would be most undesirable.
There will however be a discussion on this at the 13th October CNCC Committee meeting (9:30am Hellifield Institute). If you have any opinions that you would like to voice you are welcome to come along or to contact me directly. If the feeling of this meeting is to remove them then we will ask the installer to do so and we will offer advice on filling the holes to make them unnoticeable.
Of course the CNCC cannot claim to be the arbitrator of any matters relating to the installation of fixed aids in caves; nor do we have any authority to allow or refuse permission for such installations. In fact, we specifically cannot endorse any fixed aids other than stainless steel resin anchors installed in accordance with BCA policy.
We are however always happy to offer advice or the use of our meetings as a friendly face-to-face discussion forum for any such matters. We encourage anyone considering installing anything into cave walls (anchors, staples, pegs etc) to get in touch with us to discuss first so we can offer conservation advice and maybe help identify alternatives. In particular, for anchors on popular routes, we may even suggest getting this done under the CNCC anchor scheme (for which consumable costs can be reclaimed) which means we can publish them on our topos for other people to use
Matt Ewles, CNCC Secretary