Allan(nb Albert)

It is a sad fact that those of us that are part of the 1 in 7 are ill served by BW (if you lot out there don't understand what a 1 in 7 is then click). I do note what was said in the 2005/6 targets and sympathise with you. It may be of interest that I met with Simon Salem and Jonathan Bryant about a month ago at BW's request. As I have difficulty using the phone, the meeting was arranged via email through Simon Salems PA. Although it was made clear that I was severely deaf, BW offered no help or guidance (e.g. offering a loop system or making sure the meeting took place "deaf friendly" environment). Whilst I think disability is a two way road, I see nothing to suggest that BW is driving up it to meet the disabled.

Agreed - the problem is should they be held accountable and how can it be done?

I would not call it a stupid move - I will say it again - BW's directors can only be paid bonus if certain "safety" and "customer satisfaction" criteria are met. What better way of demonstrating that you are meeting safety criteria than by identifying a safety issue (bollards) and spending £1.75m to resolve it over a year. BW can even measure the success of addressing the safety issue by pointing to the number of bollards installed. The remuneration committee would be very impressed! The only stupidity involved was that of arrogance - thinking that they could simply do it (and all the other customer service standard related initiatives) without some sort of backlash from boaters.

I always thought you had to spend money with someone to be a customer. However, BW treat any visitor as a customer! I may ask BW some questions regarding "Customer Satisfaction" and "safety" as the directors only get paid bonus if some minimum criteria are met.

Simon Salems bonus targets are now available here Next Robin Evans :-)

I think that only serves to prove the point:- If we equate the BW board (part time and appointed by ministers) to the NT trustees the BW board costs about ten times as much per year to run (about £200k compared to £20k). If we compare the nine BW executive directors (who served through 2007/08) to the 9 highest paid NT managers who actually run the "business" we get £1.74m against £1.11m - in other words the top people in BW get almost 1.5 times the counterparts in the NT. Only one of the top 9 NT employees would make it into the Taxpayers Alliance rich list (over £150k pa) - all except one of BW directors are in the rich list. Finally, Robbin Evans remuneration was closer to £300k - again about 1.5 times that of his NT counterpart. I suppose the difference between the two organisations is that one is a charitable trust staffed by employees and volunteers who believe in heritage and the other is a quango company with directors who believe in profit.

From the National Trust Annual Report:- No remuneration was paid to any members of the Board of Trustees. Travel and accommodation expenses were repaid to 7 individuals totalling £20,280 (2007: 7 individuals were paid £14,944). From that I deduce that somehow the whole 7 of the National Trust board is paid:- About the same as one part time BW board member. Less in total than any one BW executive directors annual bonus. Perhaps we can swap our 20 for the National Trusts 7! I seem to remember that Richard spoke at the AGM about using volunteers to cope with the funding gap and Robbin' Evans robustly defended "bollards". Could it be that Richard is concerned about our heritage and Robbin' is simply concerned about directors bonuses?

BW has a board of about 10 part time non executive directors appointed by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs except for two members who are appointed by Scottish ministers. Most are contracted for up to 42 days per year and get abot £15k. Chairman Tony Hales is contracted for up to 76 days and gets about £50k. Secretary of State and Scotish ministers decide salary for the board. Total bill in 2007/8 for this lot was £192k. Reporting to this board of part timers are about 10 executive directors. Total salary in 2007/8 (includes salary, bonus and taxable benefits) go from just under £150k (only Steve Dunlop fails to get in the Taxpayers Alliance Rich List) to almost £300k for Robin Evans. Simon Salem is near the bottom end of the salary pile. Total bill in 2007/8 for this lot was £1,738k. So we paid them £1,931k in 2007/8 and if you take into account the Waterways Ombudsman then a good round figure to work with is £2.0 million. The important aspect of this is the Remuneration Committee which comprises of 3-5 board members. They decide salaries and also bonuses for the executive directors. However, and it is a big however, they are advised by the Chairman (Tony Hales), the Chief Executive (Robbin Evans) and the Customer Operations Director (Vince Moran) who present "recommendations". A cynic would say that Robbins Evans writes has own salary cheques and controls, via bonus, the way in which British Waterways is run. A non-cynic would probably say the same.

The figure you quote - £4.7m - is the income figure for 2006/7 figure for England only. The figures you should be quoting are £9.0m revenue (think of sales) against an income (think profit) of £5.4m. So BW spent 40% of that £9m on costs associated with operating its mooring business. From the above it seems that Simon Salem was being asked save 3% of £3.6m operating costs. When you take into account that Business Unit costs were £26.2m and HQ costs were £29.3m (=£55.5m) it is quite easy to see that BW might have £3.6m a year cost associated with online moorings. We have to remember that IT costs associated with auctions, consultation (or avoiding it!), consultatants (we paid for the Oxera Report), complaints and the amount of time and effort put into raising prices above inflation by both HQ and business units all have cost associated with them. Having said that, I can't believe it either! Perhaps Business Unit managers were getting back at HQ for imposing a system on them that they did not want :-) ....... or perhaps they are actually spending money in maintaing mooring sites.

That's what I am saying. One of the arguments for auctions was to high cost of administering the previous scheme!

BW's view is rather different ........ they will not charge you - Prohibits the discharge of anything into the marina or waterway without BW consent. If at the design stage the marina or the waterway is seen to offer the best solution to disposing of surface water from the marina’s land and buildings this will be assessed by our engineers and if the waterway can accommodate the flows a separate agreement will be granted but no additional charge will be made.

I will! Simon Salem was targeted (2007/2008) to reduce BW's mooring costs over 4 years from 40% - 37%. From this we can assume that 60% of online mooring costs is "profit" which will be used to maintain the system (or prop up ailing commercial enterprises!). What will stagger most online moorers is why the costs are so high.

I would agree with Carl 100%. The 9% that marinas pay is covered by BW's Network Access Agreement for Marinas and Off-Line Moorings. The purpose of the NAA is to authorise connection to our waterway network and to charge marina operators for BW services facilities including the impoundment, supply and re-supply of water to enable navigation between the marina and the waterway and within the marina. So Marina operators are paying for a service and it is only if BW claim to make a profit from this service that they can justify it as being of benefit to maintenance of the waterways. One should also remember that with new marinas the 9% fee is phased in - 0% first year, 4.5% second year and 9% thereafter so it could be said that Marina owners should charge less in the first two years of operation as overheads are less. From a "contributing to upkeep of the waterways" point of view unless BW can provide some figures which show that NAA makes a profit they have no argument that CC's should pay more. Moorings are just a commercial activity as far as British Waterways are concerned. Would they suggest boat owners who choose not to drink in BW jointly owned pubs because they don't like the beer or are teetotal are contributing less to the upkeep of the waterways. As an aside - would anyone like to guess what the operating costs are for online moorings? (thanks to my good friend Simon Salem I seem to have the figure!) - there is a good argument to suggest that those with online moorings are the ones making the largest contibution based on "licence + moorings". Should we demand a discount or should we insist everyone else pays more?

I am still having trouble getting British Waterways (or rather Simon Salem) to provide his bonus targets in the format requested. Here is a letter just sent.

Martin is right - if you read this Times article - however I don't see that the government will split BW at this time. It is more probable that it is looking at the firesale option if it can get a decent return (and probably if it can't!). Needless to say the waterways will probably not see any of the money, just like the extra tax on red.

I believe that Robin Evans has this set as a specific target. I have already used the foi act to request all his performance targets since he started and will let everyone know :-)

I was actually unsuccessfully having a little dig at the use of the word "successfully" twice so what you should be saying is:- "It is to be successfully completed successfully":-) Most of the bonus targets set just simply fail to meet SMART criteria - Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely - so BW's remuneration committee has massive discretion regarding payment. We don't even know what the minimum "safety" and "customer satisfaction" criteria that have to be met before bonus can be paid is measured.

An addition, it is very probable that Vince Moran could tell Nabo anything they wanted to know about current bonus arrangements as he attends Remuneration Committee meetings to "present recommendations and provide technical support" (source 2007/8 Annual Reports) with the Chairman and Chief Executive. So he probably knows about (or even recommended!) the licence fee and moorings targets set for Simon Salem in 2008/9. Its a pity older annual reports/accounts are not so revealing. I wonder if it was Robin or Vince who came up with Simon Salems 2008/9 target:- Successfully complete the consultation on strategy successfully which leaves Simon in no doubt as to how the consultation on strategy is to be completed.

Two targets quoted are for 2008/2009. One target quoted (the 5%) was set between BW's initial written "shared ownership" consultation document and the consultation outcome document. I am sure narrowboatworld would not have agreed to publish if the article was not factual.

Its a real pity Sue! About two and a half years ago I made a complaint concerning BW's conduct during what is now called the "shared ownership" consultation. Complaints go through two stages in BW before going to the Waterways Ombudsman. The second stage is an "independent" director - in my case that was Vince. I would have asked him what he would have done if he had known about Simon Salems 5% target. Indeed, I copied him last week with an email sent to Simon Salem and asked him that specific question - no reply of course!

BW's only interest is getting the increase that they want. How it is made up is not too important to them. I would agree with the IWA view that the consultation, such as it was, was devisive and we should only be subjected to a flat rate increase linked to inflation. On a lighter note, a cc friend of many years standing decided to make a protest by declaring his 55' boat as trailable. He claims he has simply ticked the box on the application form declaring that the boat is kept out of the water when not in use and it went through! As the only thing he has with a towbar is a very old Bond 3 wheeler with a 200cc engine kept in a lockup in the Manchester area the mind boggles. Allan

Thanks Sam

Perhaps someone who is a regular poster on that forum will do the honours

Sorry, I thought I had published the link here first - obviously pressed the wrong key!

The reason Tom has given me is that I allowed Simon Salem to comment on it before he decided to publish. It is narrowboatworlds policy to not ask for comment before publication so he didn't publish the article. I have apologised to him.