OH YES IT DOES!

April 2017 - A few weeks ago Allan Richards compared management costs of the National Trust and the Canal & River Trust and we asked Floater readers Does the Canal & River Trust have too many highly paid directors?

Hundreds of boaters responded and more than 95 per cent said that they believed there were too many highly paid bosses in C&RT, less than five per cent of respondents disagreed.

Allan pointed out that C&RT now has nine highly paid executive directors when, in 2012, it only had six, all with remuneration packages ranging from over £100,000 to more than £200,000.

If one assumes that the functions of chief executive and property director have remained largely the same, we now have seven directors carrying out the functions performed by just four directors a few years previously.

In the days of British Waterways we could know details of all director's pay including bonus payments, benefits and bonuses in annual reports. Now C&RT only provide a subset of this information and refuse requests for further details.

Allan pointed out that C&RT was promoted as the new 'National Trust of the Waterways' thus positioning it alongside the National Trust as a charity protecting and maintain historic infrastructure and went on to provide a comparison of number of staff that fall into pay bands above £100,000 for the two charities.

The NT has four times the employees of C&RT. Its income is well over two and a half times that of C&RT and its membership figures, compared to C&RT's, speak for themselves. However, it manages to pay its executives less than C&RT and with its top earner being paid some £40,000 less than C&RT's top earner.

Photo: An overwhelming 'Yes' response to the question, 'Does CRT have too many highly paid directors?'