Boaters Manifesto meets CRT Trustees
When six of the authors of the Boaters’ Manifesto
met two of the Canal and River Trust’s Trustees the result was surprising
agreement on some issues and unsurprising disagreement on other key points.
The meeting in Milton Keynes just before Christmas used the manifesto as an
agenda and the Trustees were represented by John Dodwell,
a corporate financier, former IWA General Secretary and owner of an historic narrow boat and Jane
Cotton, a former senior civil servant who is now Deputy Chief Executive for the
charity Oxfam and chairs the Remuneration Committee of the CRT.
John Dodwell told the group:
“You use the system more than most, see a lot more than most and you can,
I hope, be eyes and ears.”
Peter Underwood, who chaired the meeting for the Boaters’ Manifesto group said:
“The problem as we see it is essentially one of trust. We don’t have any in BW and
particularly BW executives.” He quoted a recent online poll in which 97.8% of
nearly 4,000 people said they wanted BW’s current executive team to go before
the new charity began.
John Dodwell told the group:
“I want to give some examples of things that have gone right but I don’t expect you to be leaving here
singing Robin Evans’ praises. Trust is very valuable commodity and, once lost,
is difficult to regain. One of the things Jane Cotton and I have been saying to
people is that it is no good us saying, ‘We support management, trust us’, why
should you? We need to give you
reasons”
Jane Cotton said:
“I think it is a particular challenge in moving to a trust to get director pay levels right. The approach I
have taken as chair of the remuneration committee is to stand right back and say
if we had a blank piece of paper what would be the right packages for people in
these roles?.Then we have to work to there from where we are
now.
“There is not a simple comparison. You look at major charities but nothing quite fits because of the scale of liability and
risk. Consultants have done that and I think it is a very thorough piece of work
and we will publish that, and it won’t be too many weeks away.”
Peter Underwood asked:
“You don’t accept that people at top of BW and what they are paid is not relevant to the new charity as
their job will change and there is a option for saying we want a fresh start so
government should pay the costs of existing people?”
Jane Cotton argued that although their jobs might not be precisely the same,
in pure legal terms (TUPE) it would not stand up to say it is different. The same work needs to be done.
John Dodwell told the group:
“Robin Evans is actually quite emotional about this. He is not far off
retirement age and could easily have just managed decline. Instead, he and his
team decided to do something to get away from debilitating reducing Government grants”
For Jane Cotton, the top team was misunderstood.
She said: “I came in this June as a trustee with no axe to grind and I have been
extremely impressed by this top team. In terms of the immense professionalism
and the things they have achieved. I think there are an awful lot of positives.
I still find myself perplexed about the level of vitriol and where this mismatch
has come from.”
John Dodwell stated that property income had gone up from £22m to £28m a year and assured the
boaters it was not the case that income from property sales went back
to Defra. There were two pots of money –the investment pot which produced rental
income etc; and the maintenance pot which took that income and other money (e.g.
licence fees) and spent it on repairs etc. Any investment sales would be
re-invested in the investment pot and would not be used to prop up the second pot.
He said: “BW has no bank debt. It owes the government about £5m and somebody else about
£12m but there is no great mountain of debt.
He went on: “I found BWML makes a profit of
£800,000 on an investment of about £8m, that’s a return of 10% (without any bank debt).”
Asked to deal with the failure of the management
team to meet their 2012 vision measures of self sufficiency and visitor numbers,
John said: “I wouldn’t only measure by those two performance targets.” He also
argued they had moved some way towards the targets, saying the fortnightly
visitor numbers were up 30 per cent over seven years and the annual figures by
eight per cent over five years.
Peter Underwood told the trustees:
“At the heart of everything is a lack of trust. Boaters know they don’t trust the top BW
managers and it doesn’t matter why. If you had done what most people wanted and
kept the BW name and got rid of team we wouldn’t be having this discussion
because the organisation would have changed.
“As long as they are still there the CRT is going
to face continuing hostility from boaters. As long as they are there you are not
going to get trust from boaters.”
Jane Cotton responded:“When I hear you say ‘bring
a new team and everything will be fine’ if there are as many things
misunderstood then in no time at all a new team will be meeting the same kind of
problem. I would be worried we would be back in the same sort of situation.”
In pointing to management’s achievements,
John Dodwell included the Droitwich
Canals restoration; Bow Back Rivers restoration in progress; stopping the
Government selling off the investment properties which produced rental income;
boat numbers up by 10,000 to 35,000 over the last 10 years; non-Government
annual income up from £60m to
£100m over 10 years; improvement of major assets (embankments, tunnels,
cuttings, reservoirs and locks) with those in the worse category reducing from
30% to 18% over 10 years.
With no movement on the demand to remove the
existing BW top executives the manifesto team tried to urge more boaters’ places
on the new council and even amongst the trustees, pointing out that, of the five
boater representatives one is for canoeists and none specifically represent the
interests of thousands of continuous cruisers and liveaboard boaters
John Dodwell told them:
“We are going to be among the top 20 charities, so we couldn’t gradually
grow, we have to start somewhere but after three years there will be a review.
What you see now has been tailored by the consultation responses. Our intention
is to go to 50% elected to include volunteers and supporters.”
Questioned about the disenfranchisement of some
people who jointly own a boat he defended the one vote per boat
policy.
Asked whether liveaboards could be represented by
a co-opted council member, John Dodwell said:
“There are three co-option vacancies. Once we have seen the composition of the council,
if there are gaps–e.g. youth, disabled., we will make suggestions to fill them”
Pushed on the subject he would only add: “If I say we would consider it, don’t read
too much into that.”
Jane Cotton added that when they knew the outcome
of the elections, if there was no member representing liveaboard boaters, the
trustees would ‘make suggestions in light of that’.
John Dodwell also pointed towards the navigation advisory group being set up to advise the
management, saying:
“Now, if you want to write in to the Chief Executive and describe why it would be helpful to management
for your voices to be heard, then please take up that opportunity.”
The Boaters’ Manifesto asks the trustees to say
publicly if the government settlement it isn’t financially viable and argues
that the current offer of £39m a year for 10 years is too little.
John Dodwell agreed and referred to the trustees’ October statement about the
need to persuade the Government to increase the current offer of £39m per
annum for 10 years to a level that ensures CRT is viable.
“We said there is no point in setting up the charity with inadequate resources.
Should it be indexed for inflation and what about the pension fund? Those
are two points we are pressing very firmly.
“It is unfortunate we are having these discussions with the latest bleak situation.
However, the one thing, and it is cold comfort, if we had stayed in government
control I could see the £39m going down.
“The decision is with the Trustees. Personally I
would find it impossible to stay a Trustee if the £39m remained at £39m. That is
consistent with what the Trustees have already said.”
He also gave an assurance that the CRT did not intend to drive less well off people
from the waterways by hiking licence fees to make up lost government cash.
“Social mix is important,” he said, “It is the totality we want and if the only boats
were those costing over £100,000 it wouldn’t be the community we know and enjoy.”
The Boaters’Manifesto urges the CRT to value BW staff more and depend less on contractors.
John Dodwell said
that routine works – e.g elsan station cleaning, grass cutting - are best done by contractors.
However, normal lock repairs will be done by local teams who know their patch.
The skilled staff’s work is split between essential regular inspections, planned maintenance guys (who are not
diverted away to other jobs) and the customer service driven team who respond to
calls. He said: “The buck stops our side of the table, there are 60,000 jobs
waiting to be done, 20,000 of them are urgent and get done; volunteers and
probation people can help with some of the rest. When you are changing methods
of working, people never like it.”
On the subject of mooring rules the Manifesto
argues for clear consistent policies applied fairly across the country and that
seemed to meet with support from the trustees.
John Dodwell said:
“I see it this way, the basic rules about 14 days etc ought to be observed. On the
Lee and Stort and at Bath we have problems where the rules were not
enforced and haven’t been for some years and in those areas there are proposals
being developed.”
He said that licence evasion had been reduced and
the enforcement staffs were now concentrating on mooring
rules.
Jane Cotton said she felt there were lot of areas
where we are heading in the same direction. “Where we can pull together, we
should.”
The Boaters’Manifesto representatives agreed
there were areas where the two sides seemed to be heading in the right
direction, especially on funding and moorings. There was also some agreement on
the need for the CRT to be subject to the Freedom of Information Act and the
decision that it should be was announced the same day by government.
However, Peter Underwood said: “It is our belief
that you need to engender much more trust with boaters.
“You need to make it easier for boaters like us to talk to BW/CRT
and make someone accessible if an issue arises.” The trustees said that BW/CRT
already talks to NABO, RBOA and others and that boaters can always contact the waterway unit manager.
Peter Underwood also added that the group intended to ask all candidates for election to the
CRT council whether they supported the manifesto and to urge boaters to base their votes on the
responses.
Ends
1920 words
The entire recording of the 2hour 37minute
meeting is available on line as a MP3 soundfile at
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/54139305/BMmtgDec202011.mp3
met two of the Canal and River Trust’s Trustees the result was surprising
agreement on some issues and unsurprising disagreement on other key points.
The meeting in Milton Keynes just before Christmas used the manifesto as an
agenda and the Trustees were represented by John Dodwell,
a corporate financier, former IWA General Secretary and owner of an historic narrow boat and Jane
Cotton, a former senior civil servant who is now Deputy Chief Executive for the
charity Oxfam and chairs the Remuneration Committee of the CRT.
John Dodwell told the group:
“You use the system more than most, see a lot more than most and you can,
I hope, be eyes and ears.”
Peter Underwood, who chaired the meeting for the Boaters’ Manifesto group said:
“The problem as we see it is essentially one of trust. We don’t have any in BW and
particularly BW executives.” He quoted a recent online poll in which 97.8% of
nearly 4,000 people said they wanted BW’s current executive team to go before
the new charity began.
John Dodwell told the group:
“I want to give some examples of things that have gone right but I don’t expect you to be leaving here
singing Robin Evans’ praises. Trust is very valuable commodity and, once lost,
is difficult to regain. One of the things Jane Cotton and I have been saying to
people is that it is no good us saying, ‘We support management, trust us’, why
should you? We need to give you
reasons”
Jane Cotton said:
“I think it is a particular challenge in moving to a trust to get director pay levels right. The approach I
have taken as chair of the remuneration committee is to stand right back and say
if we had a blank piece of paper what would be the right packages for people in
these roles?.Then we have to work to there from where we are
now.
“There is not a simple comparison. You look at major charities but nothing quite fits because of the scale of liability and
risk. Consultants have done that and I think it is a very thorough piece of work
and we will publish that, and it won’t be too many weeks away.”
Peter Underwood asked:
“You don’t accept that people at top of BW and what they are paid is not relevant to the new charity as
their job will change and there is a option for saying we want a fresh start so
government should pay the costs of existing people?”
Jane Cotton argued that although their jobs might not be precisely the same,
in pure legal terms (TUPE) it would not stand up to say it is different. The same work needs to be done.
John Dodwell told the group:
“Robin Evans is actually quite emotional about this. He is not far off
retirement age and could easily have just managed decline. Instead, he and his
team decided to do something to get away from debilitating reducing Government grants”
For Jane Cotton, the top team was misunderstood.
She said: “I came in this June as a trustee with no axe to grind and I have been
extremely impressed by this top team. In terms of the immense professionalism
and the things they have achieved. I think there are an awful lot of positives.
I still find myself perplexed about the level of vitriol and where this mismatch
has come from.”
John Dodwell stated that property income had gone up from £22m to £28m a year and assured the
boaters it was not the case that income from property sales went back
to Defra. There were two pots of money –the investment pot which produced rental
income etc; and the maintenance pot which took that income and other money (e.g.
licence fees) and spent it on repairs etc. Any investment sales would be
re-invested in the investment pot and would not be used to prop up the second pot.
He said: “BW has no bank debt. It owes the government about £5m and somebody else about
£12m but there is no great mountain of debt.
He went on: “I found BWML makes a profit of
£800,000 on an investment of about £8m, that’s a return of 10% (without any bank debt).”
Asked to deal with the failure of the management
team to meet their 2012 vision measures of self sufficiency and visitor numbers,
John said: “I wouldn’t only measure by those two performance targets.” He also
argued they had moved some way towards the targets, saying the fortnightly
visitor numbers were up 30 per cent over seven years and the annual figures by
eight per cent over five years.
Peter Underwood told the trustees:
“At the heart of everything is a lack of trust. Boaters know they don’t trust the top BW
managers and it doesn’t matter why. If you had done what most people wanted and
kept the BW name and got rid of team we wouldn’t be having this discussion
because the organisation would have changed.
“As long as they are still there the CRT is going
to face continuing hostility from boaters. As long as they are there you are not
going to get trust from boaters.”
Jane Cotton responded:“When I hear you say ‘bring
a new team and everything will be fine’ if there are as many things
misunderstood then in no time at all a new team will be meeting the same kind of
problem. I would be worried we would be back in the same sort of situation.”
In pointing to management’s achievements,
John Dodwell included the Droitwich
Canals restoration; Bow Back Rivers restoration in progress; stopping the
Government selling off the investment properties which produced rental income;
boat numbers up by 10,000 to 35,000 over the last 10 years; non-Government
annual income up from £60m to
£100m over 10 years; improvement of major assets (embankments, tunnels,
cuttings, reservoirs and locks) with those in the worse category reducing from
30% to 18% over 10 years.
With no movement on the demand to remove the
existing BW top executives the manifesto team tried to urge more boaters’ places
on the new council and even amongst the trustees, pointing out that, of the five
boater representatives one is for canoeists and none specifically represent the
interests of thousands of continuous cruisers and liveaboard boaters
John Dodwell told them:
“We are going to be among the top 20 charities, so we couldn’t gradually
grow, we have to start somewhere but after three years there will be a review.
What you see now has been tailored by the consultation responses. Our intention
is to go to 50% elected to include volunteers and supporters.”
Questioned about the disenfranchisement of some
people who jointly own a boat he defended the one vote per boat
policy.
Asked whether liveaboards could be represented by
a co-opted council member, John Dodwell said:
“There are three co-option vacancies. Once we have seen the composition of the council,
if there are gaps–e.g. youth, disabled., we will make suggestions to fill them”
Pushed on the subject he would only add: “If I say we would consider it, don’t read
too much into that.”
Jane Cotton added that when they knew the outcome
of the elections, if there was no member representing liveaboard boaters, the
trustees would ‘make suggestions in light of that’.
John Dodwell also pointed towards the navigation advisory group being set up to advise the
management, saying:
“Now, if you want to write in to the Chief Executive and describe why it would be helpful to management
for your voices to be heard, then please take up that opportunity.”
The Boaters’ Manifesto asks the trustees to say
publicly if the government settlement it isn’t financially viable and argues
that the current offer of £39m a year for 10 years is too little.
John Dodwell agreed and referred to the trustees’ October statement about the
need to persuade the Government to increase the current offer of £39m per
annum for 10 years to a level that ensures CRT is viable.
“We said there is no point in setting up the charity with inadequate resources.
Should it be indexed for inflation and what about the pension fund? Those
are two points we are pressing very firmly.
“It is unfortunate we are having these discussions with the latest bleak situation.
However, the one thing, and it is cold comfort, if we had stayed in government
control I could see the £39m going down.
“The decision is with the Trustees. Personally I
would find it impossible to stay a Trustee if the £39m remained at £39m. That is
consistent with what the Trustees have already said.”
He also gave an assurance that the CRT did not intend to drive less well off people
from the waterways by hiking licence fees to make up lost government cash.
“Social mix is important,” he said, “It is the totality we want and if the only boats
were those costing over £100,000 it wouldn’t be the community we know and enjoy.”
The Boaters’Manifesto urges the CRT to value BW staff more and depend less on contractors.
John Dodwell said
that routine works – e.g elsan station cleaning, grass cutting - are best done by contractors.
However, normal lock repairs will be done by local teams who know their patch.
The skilled staff’s work is split between essential regular inspections, planned maintenance guys (who are not
diverted away to other jobs) and the customer service driven team who respond to
calls. He said: “The buck stops our side of the table, there are 60,000 jobs
waiting to be done, 20,000 of them are urgent and get done; volunteers and
probation people can help with some of the rest. When you are changing methods
of working, people never like it.”
On the subject of mooring rules the Manifesto
argues for clear consistent policies applied fairly across the country and that
seemed to meet with support from the trustees.
John Dodwell said:
“I see it this way, the basic rules about 14 days etc ought to be observed. On the
Lee and Stort and at Bath we have problems where the rules were not
enforced and haven’t been for some years and in those areas there are proposals
being developed.”
He said that licence evasion had been reduced and
the enforcement staffs were now concentrating on mooring
rules.
Jane Cotton said she felt there were lot of areas
where we are heading in the same direction. “Where we can pull together, we
should.”
The Boaters’Manifesto representatives agreed
there were areas where the two sides seemed to be heading in the right
direction, especially on funding and moorings. There was also some agreement on
the need for the CRT to be subject to the Freedom of Information Act and the
decision that it should be was announced the same day by government.
However, Peter Underwood said: “It is our belief
that you need to engender much more trust with boaters.
“You need to make it easier for boaters like us to talk to BW/CRT
and make someone accessible if an issue arises.” The trustees said that BW/CRT
already talks to NABO, RBOA and others and that boaters can always contact the waterway unit manager.
Peter Underwood also added that the group intended to ask all candidates for election to the
CRT council whether they supported the manifesto and to urge boaters to base their votes on the
responses.
Ends
1920 words
The entire recording of the 2hour 37minute
meeting is available on line as a MP3 soundfile at
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/54139305/BMmtgDec202011.mp3
