A trustee responds - Equipment hire

Equipment hire

I've heard concern about hired plant being left on site after a job has been finished and thus still costing the Trust. You needn't be worried. Plant hire firms are responsible for collecting plant from site. They may choose to wait before doing so; they may want it for another nearby customer. In some cases cranes used on stoppages have gone 'off hire' for part of the stoppage period and then come back 'on hire'; the crane company doesn't take the crane away and then bring it back.

Daunting?

I don't think Frank Hurst (narrowboatworld 14th November) need get worried about the Trust declaring waterways such as the Severn, Ribble Link etc are too daunting for leisure use. Trust staff regularly lock boats out onto the Ribble and tidal rivers like the Thames, Severn, Trent and Yorkshire Ouse—and good luck to them, as long as they take the proper care.

All that the Trust's staff were pointing out about boats trapped at Anderton was that some of the boat owners themselves found it daunting to think of using the Ship Canal. I've done Ellesmere Port/Weaver twice in low lying canal tugs and found it okay. As to the Runcorn Locks Restoration Society, well, I'm a member, so more power to its elbow!

Statistics

Victor Swift (narrowboatworld 18 November) is right to warn about the dangers of statistics. There are various kinds, such as those arrived at from counting the number of boat licences and others derived from sampling techniques (like those used for political opinion polls)—e.g. for visitor numbers, as is well known. By and large, I find statistics useful as indicators of trends—whether up or down. Right now, I—and others in the Trust—am keeping a close eye on the boat licence numbers and the income they produce.

We all know the economic situation. As to the number of visitors going down, don't forget that the 13m included Scotland. Please remember that the figures I give are often news to many of the people to whom I talk—and that although you may have read the speech before, I'm addressing a fresh audience.

Publishing Trustee meeting minutes

The minutes of Trustee meetings between July 2011 and July 2012 have been on the Trust's website for some time. The website also says is it is 'the intention of the Trustees to publish the minutes of their meeting once they have been approved by all Trustees—usually happens at the following meeting. Therefore publications will usually be within a few working days of that following meeting'. The September meeting minutes were approved at the November 22nd meeting and so should soon be on the website.

Tailpieces

Dredging

Have you seen that more money is being allocated for dredging? The Trust is discussing a new dredging policy with the new Navigation Advisory Group. One aspect is to increase the ratio of spot dredging to main-line dredging. Another is to change the 'failing threshold' measure. To explain—at present, if 70% of the channel cross section in each km meets the depth criteria, then it is deemed okay. On this basis, about 7% of the total mileage fails. It's proposed to raise this so that 90% of the cross section must comply—which will mean 16% would fail. This therefore doubles the failing lengths—and actually is more in tune with what users say.

Diary of a breach

A new Trust strategy is 'getting the experts in front of the audience'. As an example, have you been following the work on the Trent & Mersey breach via

www.canalrivertrust.org.uk/news-and-views/features/diary-of-a-breach ? Paul Brown, the project manager, gives updates and recently there was a chance to put questions to him.