Allan(nb Albert)

I just love the thought of C&RT understanding what 'bona fide for navigation' means but then allowing themselves to give it entirely different meaning ...

It is a concern because it is not strictly true. Most of the relevant hundreds of Acts of Parliament were transferred unaltered and not discarded. It is also a concern because of an undertaking to provide information even if it was not legally obliged to do so. Basically, it was argued by BW that it did not need to be subject to FOI because it would voluntarily provide information. In the event, we ended up with a fudged solution which allows C&RT to argue that they are not subject to FOIA for particular requests. It is worth reading what whatdotheyknow.com says - British Waterways had three statutory functions - Harbour Authority Navigation Authority Statutory Undertaker It's powers and legal duties were defined in various Acts of Parliament starting with original enabling Acts of the late 18th and early 19th Century and ending with the 1995 British Waterways Act. The British Waterways Transfer of Functions Order (2012) transferred these powers and duties to Canal an River Trust with certain modifications for example to allow British Waterways to continue in Scotland and to allow much greater freedom regarding its investment portfolio. Regarding freight - BW's maintenance duties for commercial waterways were transferred unaltered. However an amendment was made to the Transport Act 1968 in relation to The Secretary of States powers of determination regarding classification of waterways. The Secretary of State is now obliged to take into account C&RT's representation on affordability. In a worst case scenario, if a freight operator or potential operator finds that a section of Commercial Waterway needs dredging, that waterway might end up being downgraded to Cruising Waterway. These are C&RT's charitable objects rather than statutory functions. All registered charities need such objects which describe what they do. Fairly obviously, the incorporate, at a high level, statutory functions.

Mike This rolling survey has been running for more than 15 years. Originally, it was carried out on behalf of several navigation authorities but I'm not sure if that is still the case. Question 3 is used to determine the authority. With regard to using the towpath more than once per day, you will note that the questions are activity based. The questions determine on how many days you carried out that activity rather than how many times you carried out that activity. If on a single day you use the towpath to get to work and later return that counts as one visit not two. If on the same day you take your dog for a walk on the towpath that counts as a second visit. Put another way, each activity carried out on a single day counts as a visit even if it is carried out more than once, Where this falls down is when you walk your dog to the pub .... About ten years ago, I asked BW's then marketing manager if carrying out two activities in a single visit counted as one or two visits. It appears that it counts as two. Hope this helps.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/visitor_number_telephone_questio It's worthwhile reading the whole request, particularly the last comment.

You are comparing two week figures and year figures. The questions are "have you visited within the last two weeks?" and "how many times did you visit?". These will be multiplied by 26 (ish) to give the yearly visits. To give an example:- 4m visitors per average two week period visiting an average of 4 times each = 16m visits per average two week period So for a year that's 16m x 26 = 416m visits. Unless anyone knows otherwise.

I attended a meeting just over a month ago where Richard Parry put up as his first powerpoint slide a list of C&RT's achievements including 400m visits per year. In the Q&A I suggested that the figure given was rather old and read out the following pre prepared question - I did not get any meaningful reply ... BTW the number of visits has fallen from 402m in 2014/15 to 349m in 2018/19.

Government rejected a revised CRT plan to incorporate EA waterways to last month.

From the1904 Bradshaw's guide:Kennet 74ft 0in x 14ft 0in x 3ft 6in average draft x 10ft air draft;Canal 73ft x 13ft 10in x 3ft 6in average draft x 8ft 10in air draft;Avon 75ft 0in x 16ft 0in x 3ft 6in average draft x 9ft air draft.

The reason for C&RT's willingness to blame vandals and boaters for stoppages lies in its "days lost to unscheduled closure Key Performance Indicator (KPI)". Over the years this has been changed such that it now excludes short stoppages and those C&RT considers to be outside its control such as vandalism and boater error. Some time back, I wrote a program that is able to calculate the number and duration of stoppages from C&RT's database. For its 2017/18 year C&RT gave a figure of 490 days lost. My program found over five times that number of days lost! Put another way, by labeling most stoppages as outside its control, C&RT managed to reduce the true figure by 80%.

With regard to VLK's, the annual recruitment drive was rather muted this year. I put this down to the reorganisation and redundancy programme that C&RT has been going through for over a year now. With regard to Friends - C&RT's aspiration was 100,000 Friends in its first ten years with charitable giving contributing £10m pa. I have no doubt that when C&RT publishes its 2018/19 Annual Report we will find that, once again, "Charitable Giving" continues to operate at a loss. There is a suggestion that, in future, C&RT will concentrate on "supporters" rather than "financial supporters" (i.e. Friends) in order to distance itself from its recruitment failure.

From C&RT's last annual report 2017/18 - My analysis of the same period using the stoppage database found 2482 lost days. The difference is because C&RT do not include emergency stoppages less than two days or anything which they deem to be beyond their control. Regarding the 'significant improvement since the Trust was created', the information on the stoppage database is incomplete in that records over a few years old are deleted. However, the information available suggests the opposite of what is claimed. Going back over C&RT's annual reports suggests that it changes how it records 'days lost' year on year in order to reduce the figures. I understand that C&RT has already admitted the it failed to meet its target for 2018/19 but have yet to see figures. The Middlewich breach will be excluded despite C&RT admitting that it failed to carry out recommendations from an inspection in 2010 which might have averted the breach.

Nigel, I know that this forum respects your knowledge of law relating to Inland Waterways. I PM'ed eracer a couple of days back suggesting that C&RT has a duty to provide information arising from the BW 1971 Act Section 18. As such the provision of such information was not discretionary as suggested in T's & C's. My questions are - Has this been repealed? If not can it be construed to mean all licence data rather than certificate registration?

Having won a court case on this motoring issue which potentially resulted in in other motorists being able to appeal, I would suggest that, in legal terms, owner and registered keeper are not the same. The difference is that the registered keeper is obliged to name the driver and will be held accountable if they fail to do so. The owner is only obliged to provide such information as they have available after making reasonable enquiries. However, the motoring analogy has little or anything to do with boating until such time similar case law is established. I would suggest that those interested in GDPR aspects read the British Waterways 1971 Act which might lead to them questioning C&RT's Terms and Conditions.

Lock 8 has never been closed as far as I am aware. Lock 20 has been closed for five months at least. I do not know if lock 8 had a blocked culvert as claimed in the stoppage notice or it is lock 20 that has a blocked culvert ... With regard to what is wrong with lock 20, only C&RT can say.

Lock 20 has been closed to navigation for at least five months with no stoppage notice. It is still shut. Lock 8 has always been open despite a recent C&RT stoppage notice suggesting otherwise. The works on the Northern Stratford took place before Christmas and works on the Southern Stratford are currently underway. The works at Dicks Lane (lock 25 and 26) should now have been completed. The reason you can no longer see the stoppage notice for Lock 8 is that it has been removed in the last couple of days without explanation! At face value, it would appear that C&RT issued the Lock 8 stoppage notice following Jessica Williams and 'Victor' writing about lock 20 in narrowboatworld - http://www.narrowboatworld.com/11239-a-prime-example A later narrowboatworld article suggested that C&RT was confusing lock 8 with lock 20 - http://www.narrowboatworld.com/11253-it-s-lock-20-not-lock-8-cart C&RT altered its lock 8 stoppage notice to remove its 'apology' which blamed the 'local team' (I assume they meant West Midlands Region). Later (probably yesterday or Thursday), it quietly removed the stoppage notice. The lock 8 stoppage notice no longer appears if you search the stoppage database but can be found here - https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/notice/14540/lock-8-north-stratford-canal (Notice the difference between this and the screenshot I posted earlier).