As a 24/7 emergency responder we work with the emergency services and other partners to protect life and property from the impacts of historical mining hazards. In the early hours of 25 September 2021 we were notified of a serious incident at Saltcoats in Ayrshire requiring the evacuation of eight households which were subsiding. Since then we have worked closely with partners and the community to support those affected, stabilise the historical workings and enable a future use for the site.
Saltcoats sits on the coalfield and the area was mined from the 1600s though to the end of the 19th century. Although there were no specific mine workings shown on our records in this immediate area we quickly established that the collapse was due to unrecorded mine entries which had been found elsewhere in the area. We attended site and supported the emergency services and North Ayrshire Council on the night of the 25 September 2021 and through the initial phase of the incident and then took responsibility for the site, the homeowners impacted and the wider community engagement, working closely with the council and other partners throughout.
We supported the homeowners affected, arranging temporary accommodation and then arranging to buy their homes. Once precious belongings were removed we moved quickly to demolish the properties to prevent further collapse and risk to public safety. We kept the wider community informed and worked with nearby homeowners who had concerns about the safety of their own homes.
This included regular updates, engineering home inspections, installing monitoring equipment to measure for any movement or subsidence and providing information and support for conversations with mortgage providers and insurers.
Dedicated customer service team set up
We set up a dedicated customer service team that worked with the impacted residents on a case-by-case basis to assess their individual needs. We carried out the demolition in a slower and more sensitive manner, ensuring the displaced families were treated with respect after losing their family homes. As well as appointing a loss adjuster who worked with the residents to ensure that all residents were adequately compensated for their lost possessions, enabling those families to move forward with their lives.
Following early ground investigations to confirm that unrecorded workings were the cause and to map their extent, we filled the workings with a specialist grout material which fills and stabilises the collapsed ground. We installed 24 rods with monitors and 63 monitoring pins on the site to ensure that any movement is detected. There has been no movement since the works took place in September 2022. We will continue to monitor the site for two years and then it will be released for use. We are liaising with North Ayrshire Council and the community to discuss the best future use for the site.
Working with Regional Resilience Partnership
We continue to keep the local community updated and are grateful for their understanding and cooperation during our work. We minimised heavy machinery, working hours and noise impacts as much as possible and recognise that this can still be disruptive. We have also kept the local MSP, Scottish Government and the office of the Secretary of State for Scotland updated about the incident and subsequent remediation work. This incident is a clear example of the work we do as an emergency responder, working with Regional Resilience Partnership colleagues across the coalfield areas of Scotland. We work together to protect life, drinking water and the environment from mining hazards and to support those affected by such incidents.