Our poor deteriorating waterways

THE first accounts produced by Canal & River Trust (CaRT) make comparison with previous years difficult, writes Allan Richards.

However, three Freedom of Information requests and a complaint have produced information which demonstrates that our waterways continue to decline.

Different format

British Waterways (BW)  accounting year runs from April to March. CaRT's accounting year does likewise. However, CaRT was late in starting, and as such, last year (2012/13) consisted of just over three months of BW and just under nine months of CaRT. In the main, CaRT's annual report gives figures for the portion of the financial year under CaRT rather than the whole year and unsurprisingly gives the figures in a different format as is required by charitable law.

Then of course, it has to be remembered that CaRT is only the 'England & Wales' portion of British Waterways.

Difficult to unravel

All this makes CaRT's accounts rather difficult to unravel, particularly as the report often omits to take into consideration previous years.

However, we have the figures behind the accounts that make comparison possible.

Used to justify being a charity

What is attempted, below, is to consider BW/CaRT performance in 2010/11 against last year 2012/13. The reason that 2010/11 has been chosen is that these were provided to the Westminster government to justify BW moving to the third sector.

In particular, parliamentary records state 'We were informed by Robin Evans of British Waterways that the company had incurred a £10 million loss in 2010/2011. The total ‘steady state' requirement for British Waterways (the
amount of money needed to keep the assets in their current condition, neither improving nor declining further) was estimated to be £120 million per annum, Chief Executive, Robin Evans told MP's'.

The figure of £120m per year (for England & Wales) was fully supported by a £600,000 report by consultants KPMG in 2008 and others who gave evidence to MP's.

Conveniently forgot

What Evans conveniently forgot to tell MP's was that BW's three year corporate plan, which includes 2010/11, shows that it committed to spend £70,951,00 on 'Core Waterways' in 2010 and a further £37,400,00 on 'Major Works' (projects over £50,000 which are controlled centrally). That gives a total spend of just over £108m which was still £12m short of what was needed.

What he did tell them was that BW had spent just £81m on maintaining its waterways—some £27m less than planned.

According to CaRT, the cost of maintaining its waterways rises at 3% per year. Therefore, the cost of preventing the waterways deteriorating last year has risen from £120m to £127m. This year it will be over £130m.

Continuing deterioration

So the bottom line is, did CaRT spend the £127m needed to prevent further deterioration of its waterways last year?

No it did not!

Did it spend £71m on 'Core Waterways' which, in real terms, would be less than it promised to spend in 2010/11? Did it spend £37.4m on 'Major Works'?

No and no again!

In 2012/13, BW/CaRT spent just £58.9m on 'Core Waterways and 21.1m on 'Major Works, a total spend of just £80m against the £127m needed.

It gets worse

If that was bad enough, it gets worse! It was BW/CaRT's intention to only spend £17.5m on 'Major Works' during the year but serial infrastructure failures, including a major breach, have caused it to spend an extra £3.6m.

Despite significantly less than than two thirds the amount needed to prevent further deterioration CaRT failed to balance its books to the tune of £6m.

Worst year ever? Definitely!
.... until this year when CaRT will spend less than £75m against the £130m needed.