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Canal & River Trust secures funding to create waterway roles for young people


Ray T

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14 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

According to one employee I met the other year, they walk the entire network every fortnight.

C&RT have said for years that the ENFORCEMENT officers walk every mile of the susyem every fortnight.

 

I doubt the Enforcement team have any idea about culverts, reservoirs, locks or bridges. They will have simply been told to put the Registration number and location of every boat they see.

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10 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

According to one employee I met the other year, they walk the entire network every fortnight. Seemed a bit unlikely to me, but even if they do, they certainly don't report or even notice half the problems. Presumably because they have to cover too big an area too fast. It makes you wonder how the canal companies ever survived, with lock keepers and lengthsmen.

Isn't it Parkinson's second law, that after time, an organisation becomes more concerned with keep itself going instead of actually concentrating on the business it was set up to do? So nice offices  lots of staff, signage and good publicity becomes much more important than the network itself? CRT could quite happily expand without boats, lock and cesspits messing up their finance sheet. That's why you can have it run by a bloke who ran the Tube  or the Post Office. And, of course, reverting to the subject,  why it's more important to wangle half a million quid (or whatever) for a bit of good publicity wasting a few kids time for a few weeks (and that of the poor buggers on the ground who have to look after them instead of doing their real jobs) than trying to wangle half a million quid so all the lock paddles go up and down.

Of course, I may be wrong.

No I do think there is a degree of truth in what you say. Public relations has become an industry in itself both in the public sector and the charity sector but equally I do think how this scheme is viewed depends on how people view the trust in general.

 

We can lament the passing of the way things used to be done though on a whole range of areas whether it be the railways with unstaffed stations or self service tills in shops but a simple fact is staff cost money.

 

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23 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

We can lament the passing of the way things used to be done though on a whole range of areas whether it be the railways with unstaffed stations or self service tills in shops but a simple fact is staff cost money.

Indeed - one of the most expesive assets a company has - the 'trick' is to employ the assets where they have the most benefit to the business, and not to build 'empires' within departments to make one 'look-good'

 

If we look at one department within C&RT - 'Fundraising'.

 

They have (2018-19) 19 staff responsible for fundraising (up from 16 the previous year). These staff are headed by a director, who has a manager reporting to him, who has area managers who then have 'staff'.

This looks to be a case of 'too many Chiefs and not enough Indians', and, the sad fact is that this department costs more to run than it generates in income.

 

For example in one year (18/19) they had a cost of generating voluntary income of £3.9m, which generated an income of £3.4m, (£0.5m deficit) and in 17/18 it was £0.8m deficit. Since C&RT was formed in 2012 they have had this recurring loss and up to 2019 had made a cumulative loss of over £6m (cost of generating voluntary income vs actual voluntary income)

 

Had C&RT made no efforts to raise voluntary income they would have had £m's more to spend on bank-staff, maintenace etc etc.

 

 

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Edited by Alan de Enfield
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31 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Had C&RT made no efforts to raise voluntary income they would have had £m's more to spend on bank-s

As a charity though they don't really have any option other then to try and raise voluntary donations. And whilst what you say is true it does seriously call into question the effectiveness of that Director, the manager and indeed the staff of doing what they are paid to do rather then say that department are not needed at all.

 

(If you can't raise more then you cost It smacks to me of staff/Director performance not being effectively managed).

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13 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

The railways only found one use for the canals...

If you are suggesting that was to close them, then you are historically incorrect. The BCN continued to offer an important service for the railway owning it by servicing the many canalside industries in the area. Traffic was only local, but still important. The Peak Forest and Ashton Canals also continued to be important carriers after railway ownership, though declining with the industry they served, the limestone trade. What did cause a major decline in canal services was the post First World War economy, as many traditional industries were adversely affected by the war, and this took place alongside the working-out of many canalside collieries, with the resultant decline in coal traffic, always a major cargo on canals. Those canals closed by railway companies were, in the main, those that should never have been built as there was insufficient trade, a result of successive government's laissez faire policy for transport.

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32 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

As a charity though they don't really have any option other then to try and raise voluntary donations. And whilst what you say is true it does seriously call into question the effectiveness of that Director, the manager and indeed the staff of doing what they are paid to do rather then say that department are not needed at all.

 

(If you can't raise more then you cost It smacks to me of staff/Director performance not being effectively managed).

Of course C&RT need to raise 'voluntary giving' and need people to do that, the 'huge' heirarchy is, in my view, an unnecessary burden and is indicative of the incompetence in management of the organisation.

NOT the incompetence of the 'grass roots' staff'

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4 hours ago, The Happy Nomad said:

No I do think there is a degree of truth in what you say. Public relations has become an industry in itself both in the public sector and the charity sector but equally I do think how this scheme is viewed depends on how people view the trust in general.

 

We can lament the passing of the way things used to be done though on a whole range of areas whether it be the railways with unstaffed stations or self service tills in shops but a simple fact is staff cost money.

 

I've never been convinced of that. I think staff just get replaced by expensive toys like computers that don't work very well, so you need more and more staff to service those.  I worked civil service, Inland Rev for a while, and dozens of big offices full of paper files and people got reduced to one office and a lot of computers... and expensive contracts with programming companies, and big inhouse IT sections... and none of the programs worked well, the filing system became chaotic, communication was dire etc etc. I suspect it would have been more efficient and less expensive just using people and thrir inbuilt brains.

Take CRT. People are still having trouble with the online licensing, and you still can't get a mooring permit online, which is ridiculous. Fixed time  online booking for things like tunnel transits or Anderton, on a system where you move at 3mph and holdups can happen any time are a farce. Overstay emails get sent to people with permission to overstay, or are in boatyards, or have been moving every 14 days. It all seems terribly efficient to someone at a desk (probably  knowing a lot about trains, which run on rails), but is a pain in the backside on the ground.

Further to my earlier quote, here's one from the CEO of US Steel: "We aren't in the business of making steel, we're in the business of making profits". Sometimes I think CRT isn't in the business of running a waterway, though I'm not sure what it thinks it is doing.

Anyway, there are bigger things to worry about right now. I just hope you've all laid in enough toilet paper before the panic buying starts!!

Edited by Arthur Marshall
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3 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

Further to my earlier quote, here's one from the CEO of US Steel: "We aren't in the business of making steel, we're in the business of making profits". Sometimes I think CRT isn't in the business of running a waterway, though I'm not sure what it thinks it is doing.

Anyway, there are bigger things to worry about right now. I just hope you've all laid in enough toilet paper before the panic buying starts!!

Agree whole heartedly with your comments, Arthur. We do have plenty of toilet roll thank you, I'm just fed up with being governed by the human toilet brush.

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4 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

  "We aren't in the business of making steel, we're in the business of making profits".  

The same thing was explained to me early on when I worked offshore. Our purpose is not to supply gas but to make money for the shareholders 

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5 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

The same thing was explained to me early on when I worked offshore. Our purpose is not to supply gas but to make money for the shareholders 

I think the mindset has to change once the monopoly is lost. The UK motorcycle industry might be a good example

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