Falsification of boat licence review
AN EXTRACT from 'independent consultants' DJS Research boat licence review consultation report published on Canal & River Trust’s (CaRT) website reads:
“Please note, this document is intended to help guide the Trust’s decision making as it evaluates the current boat licence fee structure, but does not seek to make recommendations as to which option or options are ultimately most sustainable or reasonable.”
However, back in June, narrowboatworld published an article Report not published by independent consultants. It revealed that the report bearing the name of two DJS Research directors as authors (and containing DJS branding throughout) was:
'A report produced by the Trust … of its own volition'.
Allan Richards now brings us up to date with what further investigation has shown.
Background
Following failure of long term plans regarding commercial and charitable income, CaRT’s trustees decided that they needed to increase income from licence fees by CPI+3% every year for at least the next ten years.
Instead of doing just that, CaRT commissioned DJS Research to carry out a survey regarding boater preferences relating to four 'viable options', collate results and produce a report to include recommendations.
The options were:
Option A—They do nothing option (aka maintain the 'status quo'). This would have resulted in CPI+3% increase each year for all licence holders.
Option C—Move to Environmental Agency style area based charging with CPI+3% increases each year.
Option B and D—these would see a reduction of the '3% above CPI figure' for the majority of boaters financed by large increases for two minority groups—those without home moorings and/or those with wider boats.
Consultation timeline
The DJS Research Consultation closed in April 2023. On 25 May 2023, Chief Operating Officer Julie Sharman told CaRT’s trustees in a board report:
'DJS Research are now analysing the results and preparing the final report for the Executive to consider along with licence charging proposals following the consultation'.
DJS Research provided this final report to CaRT on 23 June 2023 (this is the report that CaRT subsequently falsified).
At a board meeting on 20 July 2023, Julie Sharman and Richard Parry presented a confidential paper under minute 23/043 Boat Licence Fees Review. The minute records:
'The Board received a report to provide an update on the outcome of the recent Consultation on future options for boat licence fee pricing. The paper presented recommendations for future boat licence pricing and timing for implementation for the Board’s approval'.
Subject to minor caveats, the board indicated that it was happy to follow the recommended proposals (i.e. implementation of B and D—surcharging for boats without home moorings and wider boats).
The open letter
Research shows that CaRT not only falsified the 23 June DJS Research report but also used the falsified report to support a falsified consultation outcome (i.e an outcome completely different to that presented to the board by Sharman/Parry).
This is perhaps best explained in Allan’s open letter to CaRT’s chair of Trustees, David Orr, which can be found here.
Annual Public Meeting
The recent Annual Public Meeting provided an opportunity submit written questions direct to CaRT’s chair.
Allan submitted the following:
'Questions for chair.
The outcome of the boat licence review as presented in a 'confidential' decision report to the Board of Trustees in July 2023 by Richard Parry and Julie Sharman clearly shows that boaters favoured accepting the status quo—(i.e.equal rises for all).
However, the outcome as presented to the public via a May 2023 board paper shows that boaters supported surcharging of boats without a home mooring and further surcharging wider boats.
Will the chair:
1. Apologise to NABO and NBTA who queried these two wildly differing outcomes only to be told by him that they were the same!
2. Admit that CaRT falsified a report by independent consultants DJS Research to support retrospectively altered May board papers.
3. Provide a full disclosure.
4. State what actions trustees intend to take to remedy the maladministration that has taken place'. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the questions were not answered at the meeting. However, a response from someone calling himself only 'Jonathon' was received from a generic email address:
“Thank you for your question submitted to the Trust's Annual Public Meeting. We received many questions and I am sorry that there wasn’t enough time in the meeting itself for me to pass them all, including yours, to chair David Orr.”
... needless to say, Jonathon’s email failed to provide a response to any of the four questions.