Richard in the North West - Don't generate funds

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.