23 Apr Statement – Fairy Pools Car Park charge increases

We manage and operate the Fair Pools Car Park at Glen Brittle, Skye.  We have recently increased site parking fees – Motorbikes £4 (£3), Cars £8 (£6), Campervan / Motorhomes £10 (£8), Tour buses £20 (£15), Season Permit tour buses £250 (£200), and Annual Permit tour buses £300 (£250).

As a leading environmental charity and guardians of the Fairy Pools Car Park, OATS must deliver benefits. As widespread social media (outwith OATS’ control) sends ever increasing numbers of visitors to the Fairy Pools and other popular sites on Skye, vehicle and people pressure and more unpredictable wind, storms and rain mean paths, car park surfaces and built facilities like toilets and processing plants will need repair, refurbishment and eventual replacement.

For a fully safe and maintained site and access paths that deliver benefits to visitors, to the Skye community and the environment, OATS must generate income to:

• Repay the borrowing used for construction
• Build a financial reserve to cover major repairs and replacements to ensure visitors continue to enjoy a high-quality experience
• Be able to hand back the site in good order to the local community, should they wish, at the end of the lease period

OATS are transparent about how the Fairy Pools car park fees are spent. This information is shown on our website and signs at ticket machines throughout the site. In percentage terms, parking fees cover:

• Running costs 13% (toilets, ticket machines, online payment commissions – for example, extracting solid waste from the toilet processing unit by tanker costs £30,000 each year.  Borehole water entering the toilets must be pre-treated at a cost to remove high mineral content).
• VAT 20% (to HMRC)
• Car park staff salary costs – full time and seasonal – 25% (staff live on Skye and they meet and greet, clean and litter pick, help with vehicle and traffic problems, give tourist information, grit the road,  administer first aid and call emergency services when required)
• Management costs 5% (payroll, admin, consents, and licences)
• Community rent 10% (spent on local community projects in Minginish)
• The remaining 27% from every ticket covers:

• • Repayments on the loan finance OATS needed to borrow to cover the shortfall in public grant received to construct site facilities.
  • Major car park upgrades – most recent tarmac surfacing was £200,000
  • Upgrades to toilets (processing unit catering for 240,000 people per year plus building fixtures and fittings)
  • Repairs to Fairy Pools access path and bridges
  • Habitat management – repairing damage inflicted by 240,000 pairs of feet on soft ground beside the river
  • Other path and habitat management projects on Skye and elsewhere in Scotland
  • Support for a volunteer path maintenance scheme

This means that every vehicle and its passengers parking to visit the Fairy Pools leave most of their parking fee in Skye and make a direct contribution to site facilities and the local community in this part of Skye. Their parking fee also enables the activities they love and helps with the long-term conservation of Scotland’s mountain paths, fragile habitats and trailhead infrastructure that future generations can enjoy.  This is especially important at a time when public funding for essential path repairs to the majority of Scotland’s upland path network is very scarce.

In summary, OATS believe that parking charges at the Fairy Pools are ‘mid-market’ when compared to car parks at the most popular mountain trailhead sites throughout the UK. Some of which don’t provide staffing and toilet facilities as part of their ticket price.

The increase in parking fees at the Fairy Pools, the first in more than three years, will enable OATS to invest in the sustainability of the car park site and access path, and contribute to a reserve to cover major site refurbishment works that will need to be carried out within the coming years given growing levels of use and changing weather patterns.