Post by rosegriffintwidell on May 31, 2015 11:51:16 GMT
So far all the consultation documents sent back have been in favour of the Residents Association's community bid for Page Woods except for one. Very wisely one person queried public liability and asked who would be responsible if an accident occurred on the site. A few other people may be asking the same question. We are currently looking at public liability insurance and whether or not is needed.
We only tied the current vendor down to a price and time line for completion on 10th April. We could not put in a grant application until this was agreed in writing. The next step was the public consultation which again had to be completed before the grant application goes in this coming week.
One of the things we have to look at is public liability insurance. At the moment we are still waiting for quotations and information. We are getting so much conflicting advice that I feel we need to take legal advice or seek help from a public body with experience of woodland. On Friday 29th May Stephen Metcalfe walked around the woods with us and advised us to contact the Corporation of London as they manage Epping Forest.
We are also visiting the Wilderness Trust offices to speak to their management team when a date can be arranged. They own a small woodland near Chelmsford so must have the same issue.
it's been suggested that as long as we put up a notice saying that people enter at their own risk that we have no liability but we are by no means certain of this and is something we need to check.
What we do know is that the wood will be managed by Trustees ( a minimum of three).
We are not going to sort out the public liability insurance/trust deed before the grant application goes in. We do not want to spend several hundreds of pounds on solicitor fees if our application is not successful. So at the moment it is a "chicken and egg situation".
However, please be assured that we will sort out the public liability issue before the completion date (assuming our bid is successful) of mid August.