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Interview with Gordon Robb, Highland Council By Brian Baker has been wholly within Trading Standards in local government. Whilst my knowledge of Scotland is poor tell me what your “patch” is like? How many licensed sites have you? Currently we have just under 100 active retail filling stations, and something like 30 non-retail sites including a number of farms and estates. I guess you must travel long distances to get round to inspect your sites. What is the furthest or remotest site?
As part of the Interviews series we turn north to Scotland and an area that has a lot of rural area bringing their own peculiar problems and on this occasion I was able to track down Gordon Robb who is the Petroleum Officer for Highland Council. I was able to put a few questions to him in his role. Gordon; It is good to speak and we are very pleased to see you and your colleagues from Scotland at the 2008 APEA Conference. Was this the first time you have been able to get to the Annual Conference? Hi Brian, I have been lucky enough to get to two previous events, but I agree that it was excellent to see so many of my colleagues from the Scottish Branch there in Telford, thanks of course to the support we received from the APEA executive. How long have you been in your current role as a Petroleum Officer? Have you always worked for a Local Authority? Although having had some peripheral involvement in licensing enforcement from my early days working first as a trainee and then as a Trading Standards Officer in Glasgow and the West of Scotland, I only became fully active in my Petroleum Officer role in about 1990 while working in Highland. It’s also at this time I was dropped in at the deep end with explosives storage, so with everything that was going on in these areas in the early 90’s, it was shall we say “interesting”. My career, with only a short break in the 1980’s, when I was in the police, 44
I think the retail filling station at Uig on the north-west coast of the Isle of Skye is probably the farthest away at about 130 miles and over 3 hours driving, but with a land area equal in size to Belgium and still some single track roads, there are quite a few that are over a hundred miles and/or 2 hours plus driving time from Inverness where I’m based. Travelling through some of the best scenery in Britain is of course a bonus, but sometimes when the roads are full of tourists and you are trying to get home it doesn’t always feel that way. What would you say has been the biggest change you have seen in the last 10 years? Like everywhere else in the UK we have seen the continued decrease in site numbers, but the arrival of the major supermarkets into some of the council’s more rural areas over the last 10 years has had a huge impact. There has been a rise in the closure rate of what in some cases were our better sites and those sites that stay open often struggle to maintain acceptable standards in the face of increased competition. This makes it all the harder to regulate these businesses and at the same time to recognise their importance to the sustainability of rural communities. Do you manage to get to the Scottish Branch Meetings of the APEA? What particular subjects interest you? I try to get there when I can, but not as often as I would like. Driven by the problems that are particularly relevant to small rural sites, I take a keen interest in issues such as aboveground storage, unattended self-service solutions (and up here that doesn’t
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always mean supermarket run sites); tank relining; electrical maintenance and wetstock control. Have you got any unusual sites? Do you have many farms that have a licensed installation? Other than being old and remote, (or maybe that’s me I’m talking about) most of the permanent sites are pretty standard, but we have had had some temporary installations over the years which were interesting. The refuelling installation for last year’s Round Britain Power Boat Race, which others will no doubt be aware of was one of the most recent, but I can also remember another temporary aboveground installation (see photo), put together by Esso up at Skibo castle back in the 1990’s for Jaguar’s launch of a new model that certainly caused a bit of head scratching before we could agree on an acceptable solution. What is your pet hate? What irritates you the most when doing your job as a Petroleum Officer? Probably being presented with electrical certificates for filling stations which don’t address the hazardous area requirements, from contractors who should know better. I’ll say no more! When was the last time a new filling station was built in your area? The last new retail development was in 2005 in Wick, but there are at least two if not three new supermarket sites currently being planned. Are you a lone PO or is the role covered by colleagues, whom I presume are Trading Standards Officers? No thank goodness Brian. My role as Principal Trading Standards Officer involves amongst other things, leading a team of 8 officers, 4 of whom have within their wider remit some responsibility for Petroleum. The geography in Highland does not lend itself to single topic specialisation. Ok, what is the funniest moment you have had as a PO? I’ll deviate just a little from your question here Brian, if you’ll forgive me as it’s probably more on the explosives side of things that has produced the situations that have made me, or
