This may seem
very familiar to some of you, as this is the third incarnation of this post...
With the introduction of the Countryside and Rights of Way act (CROW), there seemed to be a great benefit to those of us who poke our noses into abandoned mines, on the basis that we would be able to walk right up to an adit quite legally.
However, the downside of this is that everybody else can do the same and this raises the nasty spectre of public liability claims if someone falls down a mineshaft - for example, such a thing did happen in one of the mines on the Moelwyns in north Wales and the adits were sealed off to prevent any more hikers falling down deep shafts and dying.
DEFRA have the following to say on the subject (considerably edited):
Disused mines and quarries
The 1954 Act requires the owner (i.e. the person who owns the mineral rights) of a disused or abandoned mine to secure and maintain the surface entrance to every shaft or outlet with a sufficient enclosure or other device to prevent any person from accidentally entering the outlet or falling down the shaft. This statutory duty applies irrespective of whether or not the mine is accessible from a public place and will not be affected by the new right of access.
Occupiers liability
You have a lower duty of care to trespassers and to members of the public using the new right of access under the Occupiers Liability Act 1984. This Act requires you to take reasonable care that people do not suffer injury if you know there is a danger that they may come into contact with, and it is reasonable to expect you to offer some protection.
What do I do if there is an unsecured mine or quarry on my land?
If there is a disused mine on your land ... and have not already done so, you will need to take steps to secure the site. This is an existing requirement and is not related to the introduction of the new right of access.
The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health have this comment:
Local authorities, mainly districts and unitaries, in mining areas should routinely inspect and record all mine openings. Where they are unsecured and constitute a statutory nuisance the authority should require them to be capped, gated or secured with a grill. They should be inspected every two or three years to ensure new openings have not appeared or the fencing has been vandalised.
The attitude of the Institute for Outdoor Learning is a little more refreshing:
Warning sign and either vegetation management or say an inexpensive double row of barbed wire in respect of dangers that cannot be readily recognised. However, in the upper Nent Valley of Cumbria there is a system where mine entrances have warning signs and are gated but not locked. Locking was found to be counter productive requiring continual repairs caused by people forcing locks to gain access.
The problem that has been created by the CROW is a serious one and, in my opinion, will threaten access to many of the underground locations we enjoy. In the past, an owner could rely on there being a considerable barrier to their mine in the form of their own privtae property: in short, it's very easy to stop someone getting in to your mine if they can't get near the adit. Furthermore, if they do get to the adit then that would be by trespassing and the liabilities of the owner would - in practice - be somewhat reduced.
Once land becomes open access, the owner has to face up to a whole lot of new responsibility: that adit that was half-a-mile off the beaten track is suddenly on "public" land and Little Timmy can run in there after Fido, only to fall into a deep hole and never be seen again. There is a legal requirement for access to be restricted, be it by fences, warnings or gates and the need has been greatly magnified.
In the case of a private landowner, the problem is perhaps not too pressing: as long as efforts have been made to seal off access to dangerous workings, that will probably prove enough.
The real problem comes when the landowner is a company, as corporate liability is much better defined. While there should be no real reason why a company should be any more liable than an individual, a couple of things count against them: firstly, a company must have an auditable process of ensuring the safety of members of the public on its land - and if this fails, there are severe penalties, both financial against the company and criminal against the directors; secondly (and to my mind far more important), companies tend to have nice big public liability insurance policies - and if Little Timmy's parents visit a 'no win no fee' solicitor, then the bills are going to be big.
The upshoot of this is that we can expect landowners who have mines to start blocking them off if the land becomes Access Land. Is there an easy solution to this? Who knows, but it seems to me that we'd better enjoy things while we can and record as much history as we can by photographing it.
Note: since I wrote the above. new legislation on corporate responsibility have been introduced, which make it possible to jail company directors for their company's failings, even if a private individual may have got away with a similar offence. Sadly, this is likely to increase the pressure on companies to seal off adits.
However there is also the issue of bats, but I don't think I'm qualified to comment on that. Now then, where's Roy Fellows when you need him...? ::)
Hello again darkness, my old friend...