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Anyone passing Barrowford Locks?


LadyG

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3 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

There's something about the science of the whole thing that tells me that the answer is that it makes sod all difference.

 

I think this too. 

 

The thing is, the system needs £ 100m a year spending on it (I think I read earlier in the thread) and this needs raising from the guvvermint and 35,000 boaters. If the guvvermint are stopping contributing, this works out at £2,857 per boat. 

 

So bar some shouting about whether bigger boats should pay more and smaller boats less, each boat needs to pay on average £2,857. So however you carve it up, the average license fee needs to be raised to £2,857. 

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3 minutes ago, LadyG said:

I think you miss the basic point, the CRT have found a way to increase income, which is why they charge extra. 

 

While increasing licence fees by the small percentages which they do most years is going to increase their income I imagine their expenditure is increasing by a much larger amount.  

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7 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

Aha, someone is finally thinking about the system. I suspect the notion of what type of boat uses most water in a lock is spurious. All of these boats are somewhere on the system (nearly) all the time and the system has a finite capacity. All of the boats floating on the system are displacing a certain amount of water which then doesn't need to supplied from the reservoir. Hence all boats are actually beneficial to water supply and the heavier the boat the more beneficial it is when simply doing nothing but floating. Hence I don't entirely buy the notion that a narrow beam boat is more water friendly.

 

In any case, a boat doesn't just appear at a lock, it leaves and enters pounds along the way changing where it displaces water. I think you'd have to do a study - either real or modelled - to conclude definitively, and that would have to take into account both the benefits or narrow beams sharing a lock and the disbenefit of them using a wide lock singly.

 

There's something about the science of the whole thing that tells me that the answer is that it makes sod all difference.

 

It does to some unfortunately, me I really couldn't care what boats are where as long as they are suitable, and moored right. At this moment where I am, a severe shortfall of water is happening, they have piled over the end of our section of navigation cutting of our water supply via the paddles on the lock! 3 months its going to last for so blacking will be easy this year just climb out and start painting! When they changed the lock gates the other year it took 3 big pumps to keep the level, they have a 6 inch one which is neither use nor ornament! One of our locks emptying can take our level down 3 inches, and the canal leaks so interesting times tomorrow might need a ladder to get out😟

9 minutes ago, LadyG said:

I think you miss the basic point, the CRT have found a way to increase income, which is why they charge extra. 

 

The argument is how much extra some think it's not enough 

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10 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

 

I'd commercialise the whole thing and instead of those "rate this scene" things we've had from CRT we'll get a "rate this boat" on a scale of +10 to -10 kind of exercise with the inevitable outcome that lovely looking small traditional boats that bring joy to the public are paid to cruise the system and purple clone craft bricks with corny names, pram hoods and stick-on vinyl lettering will pay about five grand a year.

 

So sad I can only award one greenie for this magnificent gem of a suggestion!!!

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2 hours ago, MtB said:

 

I think this too. 

 

The thing is, the system needs £ 100m a year spending on it (I think I read earlier in the thread) and this needs raising from the guvvermint and 35,000 boaters. If the guvvermint are stopping contributing, this works out at £2,857 per boat. 

 

So bar some shouting about whether bigger boats should pay more and smaller boats less, each boat needs to pay on average £2,857. So however you carve it up, the average license fee needs to be raised to £2,857. 

 

The license fees today raise a bit less than £50M per year IIRC, less than a quarter of CARTs total income of something over £200M -- I'm sure somebody has the exact figures, but these are close enough. This would mean the average license fee per boat is around £1400pa.

 

If the £100M estimate for the funding increase needed is correct, this is about +50% if it's spread equally across all CART sources of income, which would be the "fairest" method -- average license fee would rise 50% to £2100pa.

 

If all £100M comes from license fees -- definitely not "fair" on boaters, others should pay too! -- this means about 200% increase, average license fee would rise to £4200pa.

 

How a bigger fee cake should be sliced up in the "fairest" method across different boaters -- and why -- is what is being argued about...

1 hour ago, Captain Pegg said:

 

I'd commercialise the whole thing and instead of those "rate this scene" things we've had from CRT we'll get a "rate this boat" on a scale of +10 to -10 kind of exercise with the inevitable outcome that lovely looking small traditional boats that bring joy to the public are paid to cruise the system and purple clone craft bricks with corny names, pram hoods and stick-on vinyl lettering will pay about five grand a year.

An excellent and perfectly valid suggestion (remember that Black Mirror episode?) but I suspect the latter category of boaters might possibly object 😉

Edited by IanD
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11 hours ago, IanD said:

The license fees today raise a bit less than £50M per year IIRC, less than a quarter of CARTs total income of something over £200M -- I'm sure somebody has the exact figures, but these are close enough. This would mean the average license fee per boat is around £1400pa.

 

Do not forget that of the £40.4m income from boaters there is a cost of raising that income (salaries, pensions, holiday pay, bonus's, enforcement costs, computer system apportion, uniforms vehicles etc etc) C&RT accounts show that they spend £11m (2020/21) in raising the income from boaters. This obviously needs deducting from the income before anything can be spent on maintenance.

 

 

 

 

Screenshot (855).png

 

Screenshot (860).png

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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12 hours ago, Captain Pegg said:

 

I'd commercialise the whole thing and instead of those "rate this scene" things we've had from CRT we'll get a "rate this boat" on a scale of +10 to -10 kind of exercise with the inevitable outcome that lovely looking small traditional boats that bring joy to the public are paid to cruise the system and purple clone craft bricks with corny names, pram hoods and stick-on vinyl lettering will pay about five grand a year.

I think you have weighted this heavily in your favour with your lovely looking small traditional boat.

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10 hours ago, IanD said:

 

The license fees today raise a bit less than £50M per year IIRC, less than a quarter of CARTs total income of something over £200M -- I'm sure somebody has the exact figures, but these are close enough. This would mean the average license fee per boat is around £1400pa.

 

If the £100M estimate for the funding increase needed is correct, this is about +50% if it's spread equally across all CART sources of income, which would be the "fairest" method -- average license fee would rise 50% to £2100pa.

 

If all £100M comes from license fees -- definitely not "fair" on boaters, others should pay too! -- this means about 200% increase, average license fee would rise to £4200pa.

 

How a bigger fee cake should be sliced up in the "fairest" method across different boaters -- and why -- is what is being argued about...

An excellent and perfectly valid suggestion (remember that Black Mirror episode?) but I suspect the latter category of boaters might possibly object 😉

Not sure where you get your licenc fees from. According to the CaRT fee calculator, 21m + 2 m is £1125. Most boats will be less than this. Whence £1400?

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5 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

Not sure where you get your licenc fees from. According to the CaRT fee calculator, 21m + 2 m is £1125. Most boats will be less than this. Whence £1400?

 

maybe because the base figure of £50m was way, way, way too high.

Income from licences is only £21m and with 30,000 boats the average licence fee is £700

 

 

Screenshot (856).png

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24 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

maybe because the base figure of £50m was way, way, way too high.

Income from licences is only £21m and with 30,000 boats the average licence fee is £700

 

 

Screenshot (856).png

Thanks for providing the actual figures -- I did say I was quoting numbers from memory and that they might well be wrong, and they were 😉

 

Doesn't change any of the facts -- CART need a lot more income to (from all sources) to fix the maintenance problem, a likely consequence is a big rise in license fees -- because let's be honest they're cheap for what boaters get, and boaters are the biggest beneficeries of the canals -- and the existing way these are calculated probably needs to change to reduce the impact of the increase on poorer boaters.

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3 minutes ago, IanD said:

let's be honest they're cheap for what boaters get, and boaters are the biggest beneficeries of the canals -- and the existing way these are calculated probably needs to change to reduce the impact of the increase on poorer boaters.

 Maybe it is time that CCer’s pay a little extra or a big increase in License fees is needed, but if this happens CaRT must be more forceful with un-licensed boats,   What I see and read on here from Newbies they are obviously increasing and want to be around London, they are slowly getting Up North and most have absolutely no interest in the Canals and are CCing, they are using it short term to save money and it’s all they can afford. They don’t see the bigger picture and aren’t interested in the bigger picture, they are only interested in themselves and the small area they’re living in. It is so easy for them to fall into the lifestyle as they surround themselves with like minded boaters all living it out on Social Media.

  As I say they have no perspective of the impact they are having on resources as all they have known is the full bins, blocked sanitary stations, damaged paddles, ripped out boat interiors left on the Towpath and what they’re told by their little community on Twitter, they tend to last a year or two then are replaced by like minded.

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1 hour ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Do not forget that of the £40.4m income from boaters there is a cost of raising that income (salaries, pensions, holiday pay, bonus's, enforcement costs, computer system apportion, uniforms vehicles etc etc) C&RT accounts show that they spend £11m (2020/21) in raising the income from boaters. This obviously needs deducting from the income before anything can be spent on maintenance.

Exactly this. 
I doubt if anything much at all goes from our license fee to pay directly for the Canal,

we will be paying to keep the CRT machine rolling. 

Can someone explain where the figure of another 100 million a year to bring the canals up to scratch comes from?

 


 

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29 minutes ago, IanD said:

Doesn't change any of the facts -- CART need a lot more income to (from all sources) to fix the maintenance problem, a likely consequence is a big rise in license fees -- because let's be honest they're cheap for what boaters get, and boaters are the biggest beneficeries of the canals -- and the existing way these are calculated probably needs to change to reduce the impact of the increase on poorer boaters.

 

Agreed, if they want to get an extra £100m pa from boat licences (currently £20m) - less costs) then it would suggest that C&RT need to multiply the licence fee by at least 5x., so that the average licence is £3500 pa.

In theory the internal workload should not increase as they will simply be taking a charge against a card (or Direct debit) of £3500 instead of £700 so the income will increase 5-fold but the cost of raising the income will not change.

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19 minutes ago, IanD said:

Thanks for providing the actual figures -- I did say I was quoting numbers from memory and that they might well be wrong, and they were 😉

 

Doesn't change any of the facts -- CART need a lot more income to (from all sources) to fix the maintenance problem, a likely consequence is a big rise in license fees -- because let's be honest they're cheap for what boaters get, and boaters are the biggest beneficeries of the canals -- and the existing way these are calculated probably needs to change to reduce the impact of the increase on poorer boaters.

I think there is general agreement that C&RT needs more money to fix the backlog. The question is where should the money come from and how should that cost be distributed.

 

I would argue that there are many users and other beneficiaries (sometimes completely unaware of that fact) who currently pay nothing. If you total those benefits and they are much higher than anticipated there is a good case for increasing the stipend. If they are proportionately on a par with the current split of costs then there is a case for a pro-rata increase across the board. If boaters do turn out to be, as you state, the biggest beneficiaries of the canals, then it is reasonable that the costs increase most for boaters.

 

The group of boaters which is most likely to disappear first is the low end leisure boater. If you take annual running costs as a total (insurance, mooring, licence and a proportion of periodic maintenance including a survey as required for anything more than basic insurance on an older boat) then this is much higher than just the licence. If you establish that boaters are indeed the biggest beneficiary and should therefore shoulder the cost, bear in mind that you would need to multiply the current cost by 6 to generate an additional £100M. Not many people are likely to bear that cost. A nominal 50% increase would only raise an additional £10M.

 

Personally, part of the point of canals is the heritage. That applies both to the infrastructure and the boats. One particularly vulnerable part of that heritage is wooden boats, which are expensive to maintain and repair and have no protection. Given that they dominate the first 150yrs of canal use and remained relevant to the end but there are now probably fewer than 100 left, they are a particular group I would like to see changes implement to enable retention and restoration rather than disposal. To me, it would be desirable to create an 'under restoration' status for historic boats (which would also apply to metal hulls in theory, but in practice would be virtually un-used as they are a more economically viable proposition so tend to get restored anyway), with a much reduced licence fee and, since people don't like to see them sunk along the canal, to create some dedicated offline storage space at the end of an arm (Bradley?) at an affordable rate. I doubt it will happen though.

 

Alec

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12 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Agreed, if they want to get an extra £100m pa from boat licences (currently £20m) - less costs) then it would suggest that C&RT need to multiply the licence fee by at least 5x., so that the average licence is £3500 pa.

In theory the internal workload should not increase as they will simply be taking a charge against a card (or Direct debit) of £3500 instead of £700 so the income will increase 5-fold but the cost of raising the income will not change.

I don't think anybody is suggesting the whole £100M should come from license fees, but some of it will have to.

 

If overall CART income goes up 50% and they can increase all contributions by the same amount, license fees would go up 50%.

 

If they can't get that much from other sources (some lemons may be more difficult to squeeze...) then maybe license fees go up by more than this -- but not 500%...

12 minutes ago, Goliath said:

 

Exactly this. 
I doubt if anything much at all goes from our license fee to pay directly for the Canal,

we will be paying to keep the CRT machine rolling. 

Can someone explain where the figure of another 100 million a year to bring the canals up to scratch comes from?

 

 

Like taxes to the government, all sources of income to CART are dumped into a pot which is then spent on whatever CART sees fit -- for example, blue signs... 😉

 

There was a report some years ago (maybe Alan can provide the numbers from it?) which estimated that to both catch up with the huge accumulated backlog of maintainance and then carry on with it to a decent standard, CART would need a very large increase in income -- £100M p.a. was the number I recall, but it might be less than this. Or more nowadays due to inflation and increased costs...

Edited by IanD
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25 minutes ago, IanD said:

If overall CART income goes up 50% and they can increase all contributions by the same amount, license fees would go up 50%.

 

If they can't get that much from other sources (some lemons may be more difficult to squeeze...) then maybe license fees go up by more than this -- but not 500%...

 

I'd suggest that a 'couple of lemons' are totally non-queezable.

 

The DEFRA Grant is more likely to drop to £0 than increase by even 1% and that is some 25% of their total income.

Return on Investments (~25% of total income) - if they can show an return increasing by 50% then they are in the wrong jobs and should be working in the City.

C&RT are unlikely to get a £3.8m 'Covid Job retention grant in the future (so 2020/21 income figures are already artificially high)

Third party income (Strad, cyclists, Lotto, grants, councils etc) (12% of total income) is probably squeezed to near max - some more may be available but how much ?

 

That leaves only 3 sectors of income generation that are truly variable and could be used to raise the income levels

Boaters

Utility charges (water extraction etc etc)

Voluntary giving (chuggers etc)

 

These three sectors account for ~£85m, some 40% of total income.

 

These three sectors are each going to need to produce more than 100% increase in income to generate the £100m under discussion.

 

So far the charity giving has been a disaster with costs of generating the income being some £5m higher then the income generated, so in effect a drain on income rather than an income source.

 

There is always another way of generating more disposable income - reduce costs !

There seems to be a huge empire of Directors, Regional Managers, Local Managers etc etc. surely for such a small organisation "there are too many Chiefs and not enough Indians" !!

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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29 minutes ago, PD1964 said:

 Maybe it is time that CCer’s pay a little extra or a big increase in License fees is needed, but if this happens CaRT must be more forceful with un-licensed boats,  

 

 

I generally support CC'ers paying a bit more but maybe only for new ones, or phased in over a long period for existing ones. We keep saying that boats are important because that's what many visitors come to look at, but there are an increasing number of boats (and boaters) that have the opposite effect.  As to more forceful enforcement that's a difficult one. Removing boats is an expensive process and can be frustrated by last minute change of ownership etc so CRT probably do have it about right.  From my observations most of the troublesome boats do eventually remove themselves in response to sustained pressure from CRT but this does take a couple of years.

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48 minutes ago, David Mack said:

What makes you think most of these CCers are unlicenced?

If you read it I didn’t say that.  I said un-licenced boats with no specific reference to CCers, the thing I said about CCers is that they pay a little extra and a increase in License is needed meaning all types of boats/boaters. If this happens CaRT needs to be more forceful with un-licenced boats both on the canal and in Marina’s.

Edited by PD1964
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11 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

I'd suggest that a 'couple of lemons' are totally non-queezable.

 

The DEFRA Grant is more likely to drop to £0 than increase by even 1% and that is some 25% of their total income.

Return on Investments (~25% of total income) - if they can show an return increasing by 50% then they are in the wrong jobs and should be working in the City.

C&RT are unlikely to get a £3.8m 'Covid Job retention grant in the future (so 2020/21 income figures are already artificially high)

Third party income (Strad, cyclists, Lotto, grants, councils etc) (12% of total income) is probably squeezed to near max - some more may be available but how much ?

 

That leaves only 3 sectors of income generation that are truly variable and could be used to raise the income levels

Boaters

Utility charges (water extraction etc etc)

Voluntary giving (chuggers etc)

 

These three sectors account for ~£85m, some 40% of total income.

 

These three sectors are each going to need to produce more than 100% increase in income to generate the £100m under discussion.

 

So far the charity giving has been a disaster with costs of generating the income being some £5m higher then the income generated, so in effect a drain on income rather than an income source.

 

There is always another way of generating more disposable income - reduce costs !

There seems to be a huge empire of Directors, Regional Managers, Local Managers etc etc. surely for such a small organisation "there are too many Chiefs and not enoygh Indians" !!

You might be right - although it will always be a matter of opinion/judgement. Do you have figures to back your claim, which is quite strident if you really do believe that reducing the management structure could  make any kind of dent in £100M? Do you have same figures for one or two comparable organisations?

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11 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

You might be right - although it will always be a matter of opinion/judgement. Do you have figures to back your claim, which is quite strident if you really do believe that reducing the management structure could  make any kind of dent in £100M? Do you have same figures for one or two comparable organisations?

Thanks for that, now we’re going to get 10 pages of cut’n’paste documents 😂

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7 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

You might be right - although it will always be a matter of opinion/judgement. Do you have figures to back your claim, which is quite strident if you really do believe that reducing the management structure could  make any kind of dent in £100M? Do you have same figures for one or two comparable organisations?

 

The average number of C&RT employees during 2020/21 was 1646, and, bearing in mind that much of the maintenance work is done by subcontractors (not employed) and lock keepers are now volunteers the atula true number of people 'working' in, or on behalf of the trust is much larger.

 

Total employment costs were £65.8 million.

C&RTs Pension Fund has a 'large hole' in it with a deficit of £45.6m from 2020/21alone.

 

I have no comparisons as there are few authorities such as C&RT to compare with, but from my own experiences of running a manufacturing business I'd expect a considerably higher income from 1600 employees.

 

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15 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

Like taxes to the government, all sources of income to CART are dumped into a pot which is then spent on whatever CART sees fit -- for example, blue signs

But they are not

income sourced from the likes of us (license payers) will go into a pot, yes

but any income sourced from outside funding bodies has to be spent on specified projects

 

we most likely help pay for the blue signs and Richard Parry’s pension

but we won’t be paying for the improvements on the Anderson Lift, we won’t have paid for the Middlewhich Breach or the Marple Flight and so on.

these will all be paid for or have been paid for in the main by outside funding, some from Heritage for example. 
BTYKT 


i



 

 

 

Do CRT spend something like 50m generating an income?

 

 

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