The Evans achievements - Targets not met
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Targets not met
As the graph shows, Robin Evans was set targets to reduce British Waterways' dependence on Defra grant from £62.8m in 2004/5 to just £23.2m in 2013/14. As an example of how badly the chief executive failed to meet his targets we shall take the financial year of 2010/11. He told MP's of the All Party Parliamentary Waterways group that British Waterways had a Defra grant of £47m in the year but really needed be given another £39m. Thus he needed some £86m in grant. That's over £40m more than his self sufficiency target.
Quite simply he was going in the wrong direction and becoming more dependent on government grant rather than less.
Needless to say, CaRT yet has to repay the loan that was arranged by government ten years previously to kick-start it's property ambitions.
Blame government
British Waterways tried to blame government for its funding problems. However, the fact is that Robin Evans self sufficiency aspirations and British Waterways' high risk strategy with its property portfolio were the direct cause of his personal downfall. Government has always given him more money than he originally said he needed.
British Waterways has also tried to blame the economic downturn. However, the warning signs were there long before British Waterways' commercial crash in 2008/9. Indeed, its first commercial disaster was Watergrid as documented in its 2004/5 Annual Report. Since then it has been one disaster after another with schemes to acquire a hundred pubs, build thousands of houses and retail outlets all failing despite British Waterways pouring in millions of pounds to prop them up.
The other achievement
Whilst considering his 'achievements', it would be remiss not to mention delivery of public benefit. Whilst boaters contribute to the waterways via licence and mooring fees the government contributes because they perceive that the waterways deliver public benefit. As part of his 2012 vision, the chief executive undertook to double public benefit as measured by visitor numbers.
British Waterways' 2002/3 Annual report quotes him: 'I want to substantially increase the number of visitors to the inland waterways in the next decade'. The graph shows the yearly targets he was set and below is shown those targets followed by his achievement against them taken from annual reports (the figures are annual average fortnightly visitors in millions).
Year Target Actual
2003/4 3.6 3.2
2004/5 3.7 2.85
2005/6 4.0 2.85
2006/7 4.5 Not published
2007/8 5.0 Not published
2008/9 5.7 3.4
2009/10 6.5 4.3
2010/11 6.9 3.8
2011/12 7.2 3.6
Despite spending up to £5m a year marketing the waterways, Robin Evans has failed to double visitor numbers. Indeed, it would be absolutely correct to say that he has failed to increase them at all! What makes it worse, is the crude attempts made in the annual reports to hide this failure.