THE Canal & River Trust is long overdue for a Charity Commission report into it's activities and management over the past ten years, writes Kelvin Alexander-Duggan.
The mess that C&RT is in now, is down to poor administration by getting rid of all the lengthmen, flight and lock keepers, and selling off the tools and workshops plus anything else not nailed down.
Replaced by costly contractors
Who were replaced by costly contractors who would spin out a job to charge more. So a repair that would take a day, now can take a month. And all too often the repair is poorly done and has had to be done again. With no one to do daily care and repair jobs that were done by lengthmen and flight keepers, damage or problems are not spotted until it fails.
Take the Hatton flight on the north Grand Union near Warwick. Since the flight keeper was fired, the café on the towpath is being flooded almost daily due to the by-wash being blocked, leading to water overflowing the towpath when the lock above was emptied. Yet one of the daily jobs for the flight keeper was clearing these by-washes.
Bullshit about savings for NHS
The aim of the trust when set up was for 'Care and repair of the waterways under its remit'. This was changed to 'Health and wellbeing by water'. Hence the bullshit about savings to the NHS of more than £1 billion a year.
Ask a boat owner about their high blood pressure due to not being able to move due to the stoppages or the owners of hire companies whose hirers can hardly go anywhere.
A billion people visit
According to C&RT's own claims, upwards of a billion people visit the canals and waterways under its remit. You can see where the government thinking is going - with this number of claimed visitors C&RT should target these people for funds.
In the days of Robin Evans and British Waterways, stoppages between April and October were rare, they are now common. The Canal and River Trust is bloated at the top and awash with pen pushers with 'woke' job titles who have nothing to do with waterways.