Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Inspections essential for gala safety
AS a former chairman of the Charleston Tenants and Residents Association I was really disappointed to see that there won’t be a gala day this year.
A lot of credit must go to the many community members who have run the event down the years.
However, given the comments about “red tape” and “bureaucracy” I thought it best to explain what happened last year.
As readers will remember, in June last year there was a serious accident at M&D’s in North Lanarkshire. As a consequence of this the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) issued a prohibitive notice regarding the individual who had inspected the ride.
For Dundee, this meant that a couple of rides that were to be used in several gala days — including Charleston — had been inspected by this individual.
They needed to be checked to make sure that the inspection had been done properly. I should add that the operators of these rides had done everything properly. The issue wasn’t with them.
Unfortunately, the timing of this notice was such that it came just days before the Charleston Gala Day.
The options were either those rides would not be used or that we got them inspected before the gala day so that it wasn’t affected.
The decision was taken to get them inspected. I appreciate that all of this added stress to the organisers at the last minute and I know that officers worked really hard to get it all done in time.
On the more general point, we do work closely with individuals to help them and officers are always happy to give advice about events that they want to run.
The last thing we want to see are events not happening or events that are badly organised. It also helps to not wait until the last minute as there are statutory checks such as with the police that have to be undertaken.
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