Richard in the North West

THIS time Canal & River Trust Chief Executive Richard Parry was giving a questions and answers session at Burnley, covering the North West waterways:

Wigan Flight

1. (unknown) I find that the Wigan flight is in a terrible state. I have complained about this and I did receive a letter that basically stated that you have no funds to repair it. I take my disabled mother and father and when I have asked for help to go down the flight it has not been given. The help that used to be available from lock keepers is no longer available and we find it very difficult to use the locks as they are in poor repair.

We do know that it is a challenging flight of locks. We are spending money to improve the lock gates; we did work on some of them last winter and have more to do this year. We do want to have people available to support boaters who might find this flight of locks challenging. We are recruiting for seasonal staff to start as soon as possible and I am very keen on getting volunteer lock keepers wherever we can—including Wigan.

We are determined to make it as good an experience as we can, but I can't guarantee that this will happen overnight. Ultimately 21 locks will be physically demanding whatever we do.

(Nick Owen) Can I just interrupt briefly as we run hotel boat business and we go down the Wigan flight regularly. It is a long flight of locks but actually there are a lot of other places with locks in a lot worse condition. You can get down it in under 4hrs. I don't think it is as bad as people that use it occasionally think it is.

CS: We have listened to people's concerns and we have our second phase of Lock gate changes this winter. You can have a look at our consultation list on the website. So that will help, but as Richard said we have also hired seasonal staff who start shortly. We also have two volunteer lock keepers being trained up now and we are advertising for more. We know that we have people that can use it without problems and others who struggle and we do try our best to help, but don't have the staff resources to provide assisted passages.

Handcuff keys

(Unknown) The major issue is the worn handcuff keys. I'm sure that you could fix them and it wouldn't cost a lot. Having said that a lot of people are leaving paddles open and careless boaters cause a lot of problems.

CS: We have had issues in Wigan, some of this is boater error but some is deliberate letting off of water and we are working with the police to target this issue. We have on a couple of occasions locked up some areas late at night to protect the water supply. Misuse by non-boaters has also been reported to be making the handcuff keys much more difficult to use; we do know that this is a problem and are looking at it.

Reporting system

2. (Nick Owen) There isn't, that I am aware of, a mechanism where boaters can report non-emergency issues, so that we can easily see what has been reported and when. I am just wondering if there are any plans to set up an online problem reporting system?

You can do that now by emailing our enquiries@ email address. Any feedback you give is passed onto our engineering teams. I know others have suggested we develop an app to make it easy to report issues. We want to make it easier for you to help us by reporting this information to us.

Allocate funding

3. (unknown) It is pretty clear that the Leeds & Liverpool Canal is the most under-invested and under-funded canal in the country. I just wondered if you could explain how you allocate the funding and what you are going to do about this on your watch?

Factually the data that we have doesn't actually show that the L&L has had less investment in recent years; however that is the past—in the future what we have already started to do is to prioritise works based on the state of the assets regardless of where it is. This financial year the proportion of our spend in the North West (not necessarily just the Leeds & Liverpool Canal) is higher than it would be if it was just based on geographical location. That is a trend that we will see continue as we recognise that where the condition of the assets is poor we need to raise this in order to equalise things between waterways. The other thing that will change is that the money that we will have to spend will grow. In the last two years of lower grant from Government. This will change next April when we will have more money nationally (an additional £10m from Defra) that will help us to catch up with the backlog more quickly.

Urgently needs to be done

4. (Ron Atkinson) The most frustrating problem is that there is no indication of which paddles are working and which aren't. You need to know this before you go in to the lock and this is type of thing really annoys people. This can be dealt with as an experienced boater but for a hire boat this could be very dangerous. I really think that the state of the Wigan flight is horrendous and something very urgently needs to be done.

Thank you for your feedback. In terms of the overall condition of the assets, we recognise that it is not all in the state that we would ideally want it to be in, and that is why we are spending more money on it this winter. In response to your first statement about communication, your point is well made; we should communicate, where we can, to tell you what's working and what's not. This is not always easy across 2000 miles of network and sometimes we can email information out more easily than we can get out on site to put up notices. But that is our problem and we need to respond to that challenge.

Broken paddles

(unknown) Should the Lock keepers not be marking up the broken paddles?

CS: If you do find broken paddles please contact us and we will post information locally. For example today we have had a stoppage on in Wigan and staff have been out posting notices and talking to boaters so that they are aware of the situation. So please do let us know.

Not in remit

5. (unknown) This is regarding an incident at Bank Newton Flight. Contractors were putting new gates in, they were approached by a boater that asked why couldn't they fix a paddle on the lock below while they were waiting for the concrete to set? They said no it's not in our remit. Boaters get very annoyed when they see workers sitting around when they could be fixing another problem.

I appreciate this can seem frustrating—however, there is a balance to strike—when we do not have enough money or man power to fix everything we have to focus on the most essential repairs. We focus on trying to plan and organise works well so that we can get the most important things done and the most value out of our resources. If there are silly examples of people walking past a basic problem they can fix easily because we are being dogmatic then we need to change that. However there is an equal risk that if we are distracted by unplanned works then we won't fix the higher priority jobs that we have planned to do. We might fix the problem for one person but leave ten others with their problem. So we have to have discipline about how we plan and deliver our work. That's not to say that we shouldn't respond but we have to keep some focus on what the priorities are.

Don't generate funds

6. (unknown) Going back to your introductory speech. You mentioned other users of the towpath and encouraging them. With respect they don't generate the funds that our licence fees do. It seems to me that you spend more time looking after the towpath than the canal.

To be clear, we spend very little on improving towpaths. Any money we spend on towpaths has almost certainly come from another source. It's not something we can prioritise in the money that we generate or get from Government; so we do most of this work by working with a partner that wants a section of towpath improved. More often than not whilst the towpath is repaired we also make repairs to the wash wall and might also improve moorings.

Very rarely, unless a section is unsafe, do we spend a lot of money on towpaths. We know that boaters have priorities and we try and respond to those but we do want to make sure that the canal is a place where other people want to come. If the waterways were only a place for boaters we wouldn't get the support from the many other visitors—which we believe is critical for our future. We need to build that broader support so that the millions of people that use waterways will help to support us as well. That is why, for example, we have our Friends scheme so others might contribute.

Dumping ground

7. (unknown) It seems to me that the thing you need to do is to educate the wider community to have respect for the canal. In many areas the canal is seen as a dumping ground.

Yes, of course engaging with the community is vital to increase their appreciation of the canal—though there isn't a magic wand to make this happen immediately. It is those that live by the canal that are going to be the ones engaging with their neighbours and preventing this behaviour. I am convinced we can do that as there are examples of places where vast improvements in the local community have been made. We do have a new scheme setting up community adoptions and there are many of these in the North West.

Ready for festival

8. (Peter Leigh). We have a canal festival that runs in August, what we need from CaRT is to cut the offside trees by the festival site and to clean and dredge the canal so that the site is ready for the festival.

I know that we work with partners to support festivals. You can speak to the local team to see what we can get done. Dredging may not be feasible immediately but tree cutting is feasible if we can do this outside the nesting season.

9. (Barbara) What commitment is CaRT making towards this festival? We need support and guidance from CaRT.

CS: We have a new customer operations supervisor for this area—Mark who is here this evening—and his role is to work with customers locally. For example we are working with the Blackburn Canal Festival committee and will be represented at their event on 12/13 July. We are also advertising for another Project Officer in the Burnley area to fill the role that helped with the festival last year—funded by a third party. We can't lead on this as we simply don't have the capacity but we are more than happy to work with you as we are doing with others.

10. (unknown) I would like to say something about a very positive experience that we had. We were on the Calder [Caldon] last year and had a problem where a paddle was stuck. We phoned the helpline and a team were there within 10 minutes. They replaced the paddle, then discovered that the other one was broken and did the same. They were superb and very efficient. However we have had a problem with moorings in Chester. Our daughter's flat looks over the moorings and has observed the same boats moored on the 24hr moorings for two years. We have complained about this a number of times and have had nothing back.

I am surprised a boat would not have moved for that length of time, but I acknowledge that we do have issues with over-staying across the network. Obviously the system does rely on an amount of goodwill and if boaters are abusing this it can be difficult and slow to deal with it. We do face a challenge enforcing mooring times and there is much debate about this across the network, with very polarised views about what the right way to deal with overstayers is. Some people think that we take action too harshly, others are wanting much harder and faster action. It is very hard to strike a balance. I am determined to do this in the most equitable way that we can. This does have to start with boaters recognising their responsibility to other boaters.

Winter moorings

11. (Jane Lee) Firstly I want to congratulate CaRT on the winter mooring system which
was wonderful. Why isn't it possible to roll out a system like this throughout the year? Where it would be half way between a long term mooring and a continuous cruiser? It seems to be that CaRT is ignoring the customer and what they need.

On the last point we are determined to show you that we are customer focused. To deliver that in practice can be harder. On the winter moorings point, under current legislation we can offer two types of licence: that is, with, or without, a home mooring. It is not legally possible for us to change this. I'm afraid the law only allows for these two types of mooring licence through the year. On the ground I encourage my enforcement team to be sympathetic, to people's individual circumstances; however we have to work within the bounds of the law.

One licence

12. (Paul Stark) Is there any prospect for one licence that covers all waterways in the
country, including the Thames.

We do have the Gold licence which allows travel on all inland waterways including the
Thames. Eventually we do still hope to have the Environment Agency Navigations including the Thames transferred to us. That was part of the original plan and remains the policy of this Government. We are talking to them about this; however even if that happens, it would be very tricky to merge the licensing systems together. As an aspiration it is something we can look towards, but not in the near future.

 

Hogged by continuous cruisers

13. (Brian Flynn) I moor on the Lancaster Canal and one of the problems we face is the
temporary visitor moorings being constantly hogged by continuous cruisers. We have complained and have had meetings with your enforcement team and also have been appalled by the abuse your front-line staff face. I feel that your enforcement managers hide behind data protection and say they aren't able to tell us about any action taken. It seems that no action is being taken about these persistent offenders and this has been going on for years. I also understand there is a proposal to reduce 7 & 14 day moorings to 48hrs only in Lancaster. How do you propose to police this when you can't effectively enforce the existing mooring
times.

I understand your concern, though in fairness to my managers, I will go away and have a discussion as I don't know all the details. In terms of data protection we are very careful about any information regarding individual's details because we know that this could be used to derail any work we may have done. We do have to respect the other parties right to anonymity within the legal process. But I do understand that it must be very frustrating to see a boat that is a persistent offender and not see anything being done about it, even if we are progressing in the background. Whilst we should be able to ensure that all boats move at least every 14 days, we do find it a challenge to enforce the 48hr mooring sites with the resources we have to be effective we need data checkers there every day. In other areas we have done this with the help of volunteers.

CS: Just a quick update on the Lancaster Canal. Our Partnership has established a ‘Lancaster moorings project'. We have got to the point where we are going to install 48hr mooring signs in the most popular locations and also extend some mooring sites so more room is available. Matt Taylor is in the process of advertising for volunteers who will record daily which boats are moored at each site and then send this data to our enforcement staff so they can act on it. Our enforcement officer provides information to our Partnership meetings on how many enforcement actions are being taken in the North West waterway, and at what stage they are at. Our enforcement officer and her line manager both attended the Lancaster Local Waterway Forum for a lively debate on the issues very recently. Hopefully you have some reassurance that things are happening even though we can't tell you the details.

Water levels

14. (unknown) A number of years ago water levels were dropped by around two inches
at East Marton as a result of water management problems and the canal often runs at a further two inches down due to leaks which makes navigation very difficult. What is going to be done about the water levels?

(unknown) I just wanted to agree about the reduced water level. But I would also like to congratulate CaRT on the start that has been made to repair some of the leaks.

CS: I am really pleased that you have noticed some of the repairs that have been undertaken as we have been working closely with our major works repair team and theyhave agreed to allocate an extra £125,000 a year to deal with the worse leaks on this section; this is on top of the budget that we can apply locally. In terms of the technical discussion regarding water levels, we manage our water levels very carefully and we are very proactive in managing this and part of getting Volunteer Lock Keepers and seasonal staff is to help us with this. We will speak to you separately to ensure that the levels for the East Marton area are correct.

Value for money

15. (Ian) I wanted to ask about value for money. How are boaters able to perceive this?
How is it communicated in terms of CaRT's long and short term goals, planned works etc. We need to be told what is happening.

I share you sentiment concerning demonstrating value. We are trying to communicate more effectively about the work we are doing so you can see what we're doing with the funds we have. We have just published our three year business plan and the local plans are due to be published in the near future. In terms of value, it is difficult to compare us with any other canal system so ultimately you have to decide whether or not you think that you are getting value from our management of the network. We are increasingly looking at comparable costs for works where we can find a fair comparison.

Adoption

16. (Jason Fildes) I have been approached to undertake an adoption (at Reedley Marina) and am very happy to get involved. However we need to be empowered to make the changes and we need CaRT to help facilitate this?

CS: Thank you for adopting a stretch of canal. We are looking at how we approach adoptions now that we have signed up a good number of these, and what we have talked about is establishing two phases for potential adoptions. Initially you will sign up and get started on what you are able to do straight away, ie litter picking and general work. Then if the group wants to do more work we will ask for details of this and then make sure that we get environment, heritage and health and safety checks done before the work is agreed. One of our partnership members is looking for a volunteer to help us with this work.

More young people

17. (Ian McCarthy) How are we going to get the average age of this room down? What
is your vision to involve more young people in the canal?

This is a live issue that we are looking at, with our Council members leading some discussion. One of the first steps we have taken has been to set a Youth Advisory group. This will hopefully allow us to generate more connections with young people. Canoeing is potentially a very good way for us to engage with young people as the canal provides a great environment for this. The issue is finding a path to powered boating as this may not be straightforward for young people. We are doing more work with Social action funding and early stage—we hope they will add up to something bigger over time.

Family boating licence

18. (unknown) What about introducing a family boating licence (for small boats) to encourage young families to take the first step into boating?

I think that there is a problem with young people gaining access, as understandably they don't know about it. I do believe that if we don't do something soon we will have a problem with the age of both volunteers and of boaters.Yes we acknowledge it is an issue— though it may be the case that boating is a lifestyle choice that people tend to lean towards later on in life. But also we all need to be very supportive of those first time boaters, many of whom will have their first experience of boating on a hire boat.

Small businesses

19. (Elizabeth) What can you do to help small businesses set up on the canal? As there is too much red tape and it takes too long.

I absolutely agree that we want the canals be a thriving site for businesses, it's great for the waterways and the communities to have this. But there are limits to what we can do to facilitate this as we only have limited land ownership and we also have certain requirements that need to be met by any new businesses on or around the waterway. But that is where we hope that our partnership connections will help. If there are things that we can do I am happy that we should make every effort to do or support them.

All answers by Richard Parry unless otherwise stated.
Other staff present: Chantelle Seaborn (CS), Steve Bergquist, Matt Taylor, Mark Ferris