"Steve Haywood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >ADRIAN'S COMMENT > >2008/10/9 Adrian Stott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >> It was made abundantly clear that the current £30 million/year gap >> between what BW needs to spend to keep the waterways in a steady state >> of repair, and the revenue it now has, is *not* going to be made up by >> added government grant. Boaters were advised bluntly by John Edmunds >> (IWAC) not to waste any more time on that idea. > >JOHN'S REPLY > >My argument was the opposite of the report to you. It went like this: > > - The most important game in town is the funding issue. Everything else > is minor compared to the funding gap. > - Because of the pressure on government spending and competition for > funds we have to find a more convincing approach than we have used in the > past. > - Old style campaigning might prevent further cuts but it will not > deliver the big increases in funds (say an extra £50million a year) that are > needed. > - In particular the boaters on their own will not do it: "60 or 100,000 > boaters can make a lot of noise but they will not, on their own, persuade > the Treasury to part up with the extra money". > >The new approach should have three elements: >*Better facts *- we need to be able to demonstrate, and not just >assert, that the waterways deliver extensive and valuable benefits for many >different groups. That is why IWAC has pressed Defra to commission the >research that will put robust values on all the benefits. The good news is >that the researchers were chosen last week and the project has started. >*Better ideas *- at present the government funding is based not on needs and >opportunities but on how much the navigation authorities got last year. We >need to develop funding principles for a long term plan. IWAC will be >producing a report at the end of next year showing what the options are. At >present we are looking at what other countries do to see if they have any >good ideas that we can use. >*A grand coalition of support *- BW, and most important the boating >organisations themselves, need to reach out to win the support of groups >that we have sometimes fought with in the past (like other leisure groups, >environmentalists, heritage organisations and even business groups who will >develop sympathetically). We need a grand coalition of support for the >waterways. > >I summed up by saying: >"If we build a campaign using this new approach we stand a good chance of >success: if we continue in the old ways, all we are doing is postponing the >defeat." > >Sorry to go on at such length but if that is an argument for giving up, I am >a banana.
I accept what John says. I should have made clear that I was referring to at the top was, in effect, his comments above beginning "old style" and "in particular". Clumsy of me. As regular (bored?) readers will know, I have for some time been promoting other ways of getting money out of government, so obviously I do not reject that source. It is clear that the waterways deliver many benefits that the beneficiaries are not paying for. Without those beneficiaries' contributing, it seems that the waterways cannot pay their way. However, they cannot feasibly be charged individually, so it appears that the only practical approach may be for government to collect from them. I think, though, that annual grant is / would be a bad method of passing on the results to BW (not least because such grant is so vulnerable to sudden cuts), and have been pushing the idea of a one-time major capital real estate endowment.. As to John's "Better Ideas" point on funding currently being based on last year's funding, I said exactly the same thing to the EFRA committee when I appeared before it as Gloucester. Nonetheless, bananas aside,I think what John said at Brum was exactly a recommendation to give up traditional campaigning for BW's grant to be raised, and to move to something more effective. But I sh/could have said so more clearly. Adrian . Adrian Stott 07956-299966
