Quote Originally Posted by wynn View Post
Look at the statement on the front page -" After the inquest the precise wording of the new ‘rules’ had to comply with the Coroner’s requirements, and also with the advice given by our lawyer, who also acts for the insurance company." surely this is a conflict of interest - how can the insurance lawyer have the interests of RO's at heart.
There is a misconception that the Coroner imposed prescriptive requirements on FRA. His Regulation 28 Report simply required that "action should be taken to prevent future deaths". He listed seven "matters of concern". There was no actual direction from the Coroner as to what changes should be made. That was for FRA to judge taking advice from wherever it chose. Indeed, when the requests for action (leading to the seven "Matters of Concern") were made to the Coroner in court, he said that he could not guarantee that they could be implemented. So he recognised the potential difficulties himself. It was up to the FRA to determine what was sensible. If FRA chose to take advice mainly from lawyers then it took a very grave risk on behalf of race organisers. By choosing to impose impractical prescriptive demands on race organisers, FRA has presented them with a big problem. Many race organisers have recognised this. Others will follow.

Andy Walmsley has made a brave determined attempts to steer the FRA ship off the rocks in the face of ill-informed resistance. He has now inevitably decided that his priorities must transfer to those race organisers who recognise the problems. This issue won't be resolved by FRA until those on the bridge of the once great ship FRA (with their eyes closed) hand over to more able captaincy. Otherwise, FRA will be left governing races which are a very faint shadow of what fell racing is all about.

Good luck Andy. You'll have lots of support because the future of fell racing depends on it.

Keith Burns