BOATERS have shown little interest in nominating themselves for election to Canal & River Trust's Council and have also shown little interest in sponsoring those that have nominated themselves.
With just hours to go before the Wednesday midnight deadline, just three boaters out of 18 nominated have the 10 sponsors required to be able to stand for election to the four available ‘private boating' seats on the Trust's Council. Indeed, nine nominees simply have no sponsors!
IWA not standing
Three years ago, some 33 candidates stood for election. More than 25% of almost 29,000 eligible boaters voted in three IWA trustees and one IWA/AWCC member. This time around, IWA trustees are not standing due to a 'gentleman's agreement' which gives them a single permanent place on Council instead of its own Waterways Recovery Group (WRG).
The same ‘single transferable vote' system is being used but now voting is ‘online only' with a nomination system in place to ensure that nominees have some support before becoming candidates.
Following the survey it commissioned last year which found that only one in four boaters felt they were respected by the Trust (Official—CaRT does not respect boaters), one would have hoped that they would have been open about the situation and what they intended to do to address it.
Suppressed report
Instead, the Trust suppressed the report and decided to distance itself from its paying customers. Examples of this approach are the discontinuing of open boater meetings with the chief executive and discontinuance of meetings with national boating associations.
Commenting on the lack of interest in the election, Mark Tizzard, NABO's Vice Chairman stated that it ‘Potentially says more about how boaters are 'engaged' with CaRT than any survey'.
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Allan further tells us that just 36 hours before the deadline, there has been a rise in nominations from 18 to 26.
Surprisingly, these include the existing private boating council member, and IWA trustee, Vaughan Welch. Mr Welch's election statement omits this fact and a webpage stating that he is currently IWA's Deputy National Chairman has just been removed from IWA's website!
It would appear that in the matter of the ‘gentleman's agreement' with CaRT, IWA are not gentlemen!
Vaughan Welch has of course obtained the required 10 sponsors...