The Floater June 2017

June 2017 - Peter Underwood reports on the Canal & River Trust's latest attempts to reduce the number of collisions and injuries involving cyclists on our towpaths – ranging from cut-out ‘sleeping policeman’ to spray on signs urging people to slow down to two new videos.

The Canal & River Trust claims its towpaths are “fast becoming one of the nation’s favourite places to relax” but speeding cyclists, especially in urban areas are turning them into a nightmare for families, pet owners and tourists.

June 2017 - Boaters notice that shortening visitor mooring times seems to be a knee-jerk response from Canal & River Trust and, to a lesser extent, British Waterways before them. As Peter Underwood explains, it is not particularly logical, but can boaters do anything to change it?

Certain parts of the system – ironically not the busiest – have a plethora of short duration visitor moorings. It seems to be C&RT's only answer when holiday boaters complain; even though it doesn't help.

June 2017 - Canal & River Trust has denied that it holds any information relating to a working group it claims to have set up to look at the results of the 2016 Boat Owners’ Survey, Allan Richards reports

Despite repeating several times that it holds no information about the group it has still gone on to offer to talk about the possible impact the same (non-existent?) working group might have on C&RT policies in a move that leaves us gasping at the Orwellian doublethink on show.

June 2017 - It seems C&RT is simply not repairing the network as fast as it is falling apart – something many boaters suspect from their personal experience – Allan Richards has been crunching the numbers.

Some months back, The Floater described how C&RT had failed to meet its most important maintenance target for the 2015/16 financial year. At the beginning of the year (April 1 2015), the Trust had some 59,133 recorded defects on its 2,000 miles of waterways (up from 50,579 the previous year).

June 2017 - There are signs that Canal & River Trust may be coming to terms with what is swiftly becoming the foremost organisation seeking to restore the Northern Reaches of the Lancaster Canal, Peter Underwood reports.

As his Owd Lanky Boaters Group hits 1,000 members Colin Ogden has been in talks with C&RT to take over responsibility for the Tewitfield lock flight – the first major structure on the abandoned section of the canal.

June 2017 - It cost Canal & River Trust half a million pounds to settle out of court with Ken Churchill after his boat sank in Lock 40 of the Bank Newton flight after snagging on a lock wall. He may have defeated C&RT in court, but Ken remains determined other boaters won't suffer the same fate, as Peter Underwood reports.

June 2017 - The Floater reaches 10-15,000 people most days with news about Britain's waterways – most of which won't be found in the commercial canal media, and certainly not from C&RT spin doctors – but it may be about to go out of business, reports Alec Wood.

June 2017 - C&RT's press release about its 2017 Boat Owners Survey places positive spin on the results but admits there is room for improvement. Instead of publishing the report on which the article is based, it says it will be published at a later date, Allan Richards reports.

This not only prevents boaters from checking the claims made against the report immediately but potentially prevents the report being obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. Section 22 of the Act allows information to be withheld if there is an intention to publish at a future date.

June 2017 - Nearly a quarter of boaters remain dissatisfied with the Canal & River Trust's waterways and more than 20 per cent would not recommend them to others – Peter Underwood explores C&RT's claims about the 2017 Boat Owners survey.

At present we only have C&RT's interpretation of the annual survey of Boat Owners’ Views and it goes for a relentlessly positive spin on what, for most charitable or commercial organisations, be a somewhat depressing result.