As part of its scrutiny of the 2023/24 audit of the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts, the Committee took evidence from the Auditor General for Scotland (AGS) on 7 November 2024 and from the Scottish Government’s Permanent Secretary on 22 January 2025.
Following these evidence sessions, the Committee agreed that it wished to revisit the work undertaken by the Session 5 Public Audit and Post-legislative Scrutiny Committee on the Cairngorm Funicular Railway.
In August 2019 Audit Scotland reported on the 2018/19 audit of Highlands and Islands Enterprise Cairngorm mountain and funicular railway in response to Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) setting up Cairngorm Mountain (Scotland) Limited to take over the operation of the Cairngorm Mountain ski resort and funicular railway. In June 2020, Audit Scotland further reported on events leading up to the previous operator, Cairngorm Mountain Limited entering administration and HIE’s management of Cairngorm mountain and the funicular railway.
Additionally, the Scottish Government published a financial management review of Cairngorm Mountain in June 2020 which made recommendations for HIE around the procurement of an operator of the resort, scrutiny of the operator’s finances and costs and financial risk assessments for HIE.
In Session 5, the Committee’s predecessor held two evidence sessions with the AGS following the publication of both reports on 19 September 2019 and 1 October 2020. While the Session 5 Committee was restricted in the evidence it could take due to ongoing legal proceedings, the Session 5 Committee’s legacy report recommended that the successor committee may wish to continue scrutiny once proceedings had concluded.
Read the Session 5 reports on Audit Scotland’s website:
The 2018/19 audit of Highlands and Islands Enterprise: Cairngorm mountain and funicular railway
Highlands and Islands Enterprise: Management of Cairngorm Mountain and funicular railway
The inquiry was discussed at the following Committee meetings: