Tag Archives: mountain rescue

Loch Awe tragedy produces commonsense conclusions

Posted on by

Kilchurn castle Copyright Sue Anderson, Island Focus

A review of rescue services and safety issues on Scotland’s huge freshwater estate Continue reading →

Remember the row on Ofcom hiking VHF transmission fees for Lifeboat and Mountain Rescue services?

Posted on by

The consultation period on Ofcom‘s proposals for a massive hike in its prices for marine and aeronautical VHF transmission came to an end on 30th October.

As For Argyll reported at the time, the change in pricing strategy Ofcom proposed would be crippling for the lifeboat and mountain rescue services. Both of these are charitable organisations staffed mainly by voluteers and dependent on the public for donations.

Significant media attention was paid to the situation and Ofcom has stayed pretty quiet since – ‘considering carefully the responses received from stakeholders’.

It has now issued a short update on its post-consultation intentions for the ‘Administered Incentive Pricing’ (AIP) scheme it has proposed. This name and acronym not only has a grimly determined ring to it but is foolishly open to confusion in the aeronautical industry also centrally affected by this specific Ofcom scheme.

In the aeronatical world, an AIP has long been an Aeronautical Information Publication, defined as ‘a publication issued by or with the authority of a state and containing aeronautical information of a lasting character essential to air navigation’.

Anyway, the key points of the Ofcom update on its own AIP are:

  • ‘We are considering a number of issues in more detail, working closely with consultants with expertise in the maritime and aeronautical sectors, and we will be discussing these issues with the Civil Aviation Authority and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’.
  • ‘We have no plans to change the fees for VHF communications channels before April 2010 at the earliest’.
  • ‘We have no plans to alter the current arrangements under which mountain and lowland rescue services make use of radio channels co-ordinated and paid for by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’.
  • ‘We have no plans to charge AIP to ships and have proposed that we should not apply AIP to aircraft either’.

There some oddities in the announcement, however hard it tries to sidestep more controversy.

It says specifically that: ‘We do not expect fees for radar and aeronautical navigation aids to be subject to any change related to this policy until some time after 2010′. This suggests that it expects fee rises to come into play in other areas soon after the start of 2010.

Since price rises are about additional revenue generation, the exclusions and deferments already noted in this document raise questions about where the money is going to come from.

However, Ofcom says that, in the Spring of 2009, it will provide further information on the next steps it plans in the introduction of AIP and that it will ‘hold a number of stakeholder workshops before publishing further proposals for consultation’.

For Argyll’s two previous stories on this matter were:

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Ofcom back down on VHF price hike for RNLI – but Mountain Rescue still under threat

Posted on by

Ofcom has pubished an update to its obscurely titled ‘Administered Incentive Pricing for the Maritime and Aeronautical Sectors’. The revised proposals include allowing organisations that have a large number of transmitters around the country (like the RNLI) to pay a single fee per radio channel which covers any number of transmitters across the UK.

Ofcom says that the RNLI may see its charges fall as a result of its proposal to offer a single, lower cost licence for multiple users.

This backdown follows national outrage at the original proposal which, as we reported, would have seen the RNLI fee for VHF transmission rise astronomically – by 340% – to a level they could never have sustained.

However welcome this revised position is, it still does not cover the land-based use of VHF by crucial oganisations like Mountain Rescue, also threatened by Ofcom’s rapacious appetites.

With its huge natural resources of water and mountains, Argyll has a serious vested interest in the vital services provided by both the RNLI and Mountain Rescue.

We advise all interested parties and their supports to take an active part in the Ofcom consultations on the matter – which close on 30th October.

Ofcom hike of VHF radio licence fees threatens lifeboats and mountain rescue

Posted on by

Ofcom is proposing to hike the fees it charges for VHF licences – the frequency used by the rescue services – by almost 350%. It has offered to discuss a continuation of the traditional 50% discounts for charities, which covers these land and sea rescue services. However, the fee hike is so steep that even half of it will be almost three and a half times what these organisations currently pay.

Gerry Akroyd, leader of the Skye Mountain Rescue Team has told BC Scotland that the costs that would now be involved are ‘astronomical’. He pointed out that the mountain rescue service is ‘… a charitable organisation that save lives and is run by volunteers and is not a business’.

The Mountain Rescue Committee of Scotland has written to Ofcom on the matter and has asked every individual in every mountain rescue team to write to it too.

Peter Bradley, UK Operations Manager for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) says that the charity currently pays £38,000 pa for its VHF licence. This is 50% of the standard fee. Use of radio by all the lifeboats is free of charge but transmission from all the onshore facilities is charged. These fees cover VHF transmission from the lifeboat stations and the radio pagers to summon volunteers crew.

Mr Bradley said that the new fee Ofcom propose to charge is £260,000. At a 50% discount, if this was agreed, the RNLI would still have to pay £130,000 pa. This is over 3.4 times the £38,000 it pays at the moment. When Mr Bradley says that he thinks it is unrealistic to imagine that volunteer fundraisers can generate this volume of additional cash in the current economic situation, it is easy to see what he means.

Like the Mountain Rescue Committee of Scotland, the RNLI hopes that its volunteers and supportive members of the public will make representations to Ofcom before the end of the consultation period on 30th October.

Here in Argyll these rescue services are central to the nature of the place and the safety of those who take advantage of its most significant assets of sea and hills. Ofcom needs to hear from Argyll. Do it here.

Glen Etive sees first ever use of ‘Spot’ personal GPS in international rescue drama

Posted on by newsroom

Niels Vinther, a Dane now living in Sunderland, was in Glen Etive early yesterday, chasing hs second completion of the annual TGO Challenge. (Participants walk across Scotland, west to east, in under fifteen days.) He started from Oban on Friday and was fifteen miles south of Fort William when he began to suffer severe stomach pains in the early hours of Sunday morning.

After two hours he tried his mobile phone to call for help but could get no signal. At around 3.00am he then activated a GPS Tracker/Alarm system – ‘Spot’ – which he had bought from an American company, Adventure Trading. His trek was being monitored online by a director of this company. When Mr Vinther activated the system’s Emergency Beacon, his message – received by controllers in Texas – read: ‘Help message. I’m immobilised but okay and cannot reach you by phone. Find GEOS on Google map and send help’.

The Emergency Response Centre in Houston, Texas, alerted Police in Fort William immediately after 3.00am, giving them the man’s exact position. At 3.35am HIghland Police had contacted RAF Kinloss and a helicopter was scrambled from Prestwick. At 5.00am Mr Vinther was found and flown to Belford Hospital in Fort William where, last night, a spokesman described his condition as ‘comfortable’.

Mr Vinther praised his rescuers for their swift response. Flight Lieutenant Crawford of RAF Kinloss said that, without the accurate position pinpointing of Mr Vinther’s GPS device, ‘We would have had a start position and where the man was walking to, but the search area would have been huge. The device cut down the amount of time it took us. We launched the helicopter to the position given and there he was. There was no searching. It has saved us an awful lot of time and got this gentleman, who was in a great deal of pain, medical assistance quickly’.

The ‘Spot’ device, which has been used in American, Canada, the North Pole and off the Tasmania coast, has never been activated in Europe before. It could be said to have made its point with no argument.