Coal Tip Safety – Technical Group Meeting 15th October 2025

Coal Tip Safety – Technical Group Meeting 15th October 2025 Page 1 of 4 Notes of the meeting held on 15th October 2025 between 10:30 and 11:30 Present Welsh Government Mining Remediation Authority, Natural Resources Wales, Local Authorities, Other Chair Secretariat MRA Wrexham Torfaen RCT Cardiff Blaenau Gwent Merthyr NPT Monmouthshire WLGA Caerphilly Torfaen Bridgend Flintshire RCT Caerphilly Arcadis Arcadis Swansea Apologies NRW 1. Update on inspections A total of 656 inspections have been conducted to date. 554 Category A inspections have been carried out so far with 497 reports uploaded to Egress. All Category A tips have been inspected in Blaenau Gwent, Bridgend, Cardiff, Merthyr, Monmouth and Torfaen. Over the summer, 82 Category D tips and 20 candidate tips were inspected. In November we will begin our winter inspections of Category C and D tips, beginning with tips under public sector ownership before moving on to privately owned tips in the new year. Our monthly inspections at Nant yr Odyn and weekly inspections at Cwmtillery continue. 2. CTS Grant Scheme Q2 forecasting is in progress. A new multi-year funding model for CTS is now available. It can be used for capital works such as monitoring, stabilisation and drainage, or can be used for revenue purposes to address resource gaps or procure specialist advice. Please engage with contactors to determine what work is feasible. Coal Tip Safety – Technical Group Meeting 15th October 2025 Page 2 of 4 Applications are to be submitted by 10 December 2025. Variation work letters can be issued if new work is identified at a later date. Action: Multi-year funding applications to be returned by 10 December 2025. 3. Digital Implementation – Data Sharing with Public Authority partners I have posted a poll in the meeting chat to gauge whether Public Authority partners would rather automatically receive inspection reports and notices for all tips in their area (including those in private ownership), only receive reports and notices for tips on land they own, or not automatically receive reports and instead request relevant ones when needed. It was emphasised that this was not asking the question definitively, but to give the Digital team a steer as they begin to scope out the implementation of digital services for the Authority (and the question would likely be revisited in due course with greater detail). Can you not access all reports from the new body’s public facing portals? Not all reports will be publicly available by default, only those specified in the Act; for example, the Act requires only the assessment report must be published, but not subsequent monitoring reports. The Authority may publish them but aren’t required to do so. 4. Welsh Apprenticeship Alliance The WAA (Welsh Apprenticeship Alliance) was established in 2012 and is supported by Welsh Government, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and Arcadis. WAA advertise technical apprenticeship roles for public and private organisations and recruit on their behalf. WAA sift applications and conduct interviews according to the job specification provided. WAA then send a select number of vetted candidates for a final interview with the employer. WAA will do all the paperwork and drawdown available funding for the apprentices. WAA offer ongoing support for the apprentices by running workshops and masterclasses with industry professionals and encouraging apprentices to gain institutional accreditation. WAA offer apprenticeships from BTEC to degree level. Does WAA’s framework provide teaching on coal tip remediation and geotechnical engineering? Construction and Built Environment is a very broad qualification. The employer can tailor NVQs such as site management, ecology or civil engineering to the needs of their organisation. 5. Skills pipeline: Workforce development I have been examining strategic external workforce planning across the portfolio and how Welsh Government engages with the external workforce to deliver ministerial priorities. Some identified issues include short-term contracts, a lack of a career path, an ageing workforce and replicating existing highly trained professionals in such a niche area in the incoming workforce. Welsh Government, in conjunction Coal Tip Safety – Technical Group Meeting 15th October 2025 Page 3 of 4 with WLGA, has developed an environmental engineering placement scheme with 7 participants, 6 working in flood and coastal erosion and 1 working in mining legacy. Each participant partakes in weekly scheme-wide training and development with the rest of their cohort. The scheme was targeted at students undertaking a placement year, new graduates and those considering a change in career. The scheme will run October 2025-March 2027, and we hope to replicate it again next year. We would like to know what the priority areas are for mining legacy. A survey on the nature workforce was recently conducted to establish the demographics involved in nature recovery, a similar exercise could be done for environmental engineering and mining legacy. Let me know if any scheme participants would be interested in a site visit. I will also seek authorisation to send over some drone footage for them to study. Asked if North Wales colleagues could identify opportunities for a site visit to accommodate scheme participants based there. What are the next steps now that the problems have been identified? We want you to work with us and feed into potential solutions. We could develop a survey to identify specific challenges in mining legacy. Construction and Built Environment is not a course specific to Wales, we may need to develop Wales- specific, in-house training. We need to harness and capture the skills in this field before professionals retire as the incoming workforce is insufficient. Actions: Members to contact regarding workforce priorities and participating in a survey on the existing workforce within environmental engineering and mining legacy. to arrange site visit and other learning opportunities for the environmental engineering placement scheme. Representatives from local authorities in North Wales to consider whether they can offer something similar. 6. AOB The CTS Communications and Engagement Reference Group is meeting later today to discuss and feedback on recent comms activity such as the CTS leaflet, the Bill Sealing Ceremony and the Autumn Data Update. Please contact me or your representative on that group if you which to contribute any feedback. The CTS leaflet is now available online on Welsh Government’s website (English and Welsh). A geo-technical consultant produced a map of a coal tip with a different boundary to that shown in Welsh Government’s maps. This prompted a FOI. Send the information to me to check against our records. Boundary contentions are common as boundaries are captured subjectively. One response to the leaflet suggested a belief that nothing had been done to address coal tip safety since Aberfan. The history of work done is not well known. A priority is to emphasise the wider work being done to affected communities. We are looking at web page statistics to gauge engagement with the material. We Coal Tip Safety – Technical Group Meeting 15th October 2025 Page 4 of 4 will share these results with the group and will discuss it more in-depth in the Communications and Engagement Reference Group. We recently engaged with the fire service following a wildfire at Tylorstown. They cute a swathe of vegetation as a fire break. They were really helpful and have a land engagement officer to engage with land occupiers to mitigate the risk of fire. I attended a Bug Life event on colliery spoil and coal fields which highlighted the benefits of collaborating with ecology teams. At Tylorstown they helped us maintain access tracks to key drainage infrastructure. Actions: Members to contact with any feedback on recent comms activity for CTS. to send consultant’s report.