Waterways News
IWA brings a great atmosphere to Perdiswell Park, Worcester We celebrated our 75th anniversary year at Perdiswell Park in Worcester over the August bank holiday weekend. The IWA Festival of Water attracted thousands of visitors eager to join in the fun. Close to 100 boats moored along the towpath for the festival. Traditional working boats and modern narrowboats decked with bunting, flags and flowers attracted a constant stream of admirers. Visitors also enjoyed the Worcester heritage walk, following the waterways from the centre of Worcester to Perdiswell Park. This included a short length of the River Severn, Diglis Docks and the Worcester & Birmingham Canal. Volunteers worked tirelessly for the past two years to put on this event – despite it having to be cancelled in 2020 due to Covid. Paul Rodgers, IWA National Chair, said: “I am extremely grateful to the team at Worcester City Council for its unwavering support, to the caterers and stallholders who held the faith, and to all the volunteers who gave their time and put so much effort into ensuring the event was such a success.” Boats gathered on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal for the IWA Festival of Water this summer.
Droitwich Canals: celebrating ten years back in water As well as celebrating 75 years of campaigning at the IWA Festival of Water, we also recognised the anniversary of the nearby Droitwich Canals reopening. A display featured historic photographs of the project, spanning more than 30 years of work. In 1959 IWA member, Max Sinclair, started a correspondence campaign in the local press and with the councils for restoration. This led to decades of restoration work, with IWA’s Waterway Recovery Group volunteers supporting the Droitwich Canals Trust and wider Droitwich Canals Restoration Partnership. WRG volunteers were particularly involved in the restoration of the Hanbury Locks throughout the 1980s, ’90s and early 2000s, and supported the Droitwich Big Dig of 1973 when over 500 volunteers turned up to clear vegetation and start restoration work. In 2005 work to complete the restoration was funded by grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund, Advantage West Midlands, Wychavon District Council, Worcestershire County Council, IWA and others. WRG volunteers returned to the project in 2008 and helped refurbish the Droitwich Barge Lock prior to the reopening of the canals. The Droitwich canals were fully reopened in 2011, 72 years after they were officially abandoned. Droitwich was reconnected to the River Severn and the Worcester & Birmingham Canal. Restoration of the canals also re-established the Droitwich cruising ring. Find out more about IWA’s Waterway Recovery Group Canal Camps and regional digs WRG volunteers working on one of the locks at Hanbury at waterways.org.uk/wrg. in 1988.
IWA responds to EA consultation on boat registration charges IWA has responded critically to the Environment Agency’s recent consultation, which EA says will improve transparency and consistency in registration charges across its waterways. IWA considers the proposals extremely divisive and likely to perpetuate the differences between EA’s three waterway areas. The proposals also fail to address the lack of enforcement of the existing regime, and the wider funding shortfall. The consultation outlined a plan for the next three years based on a revised boat registration charging framework, intended to be implemented with effect from next year. The consultation was launched in June and closed in the middle of September, a busy time of year for boaters and waterways organisations, which meant many were not able to respond. One proposal would see the Anglian and Medway registration fee structure brought in line with the charging scheme on the Thames by introducing a boat
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area-based fee (rather than just length). This, along with the removal of a cap on charges for boats over a certain size, will see huge registration fee increases for the owners of larger craft. Another of IWA’s key objections is to the significantly higher fees that boaters based in the Anglian region will pay compared to those on the Thames. In addition to a fee per square metre (which itself will vary across the three regions), there will also be a ‘base fee’ on top which creates a huge discrepancy between areas. On the River Thames the base fee is proposed to be set at £15.90 for 2022, compared to £159 on the Anglian waterways. This discrepancy is extremely divisive, particularly as it is the waterways which see the poorest provision of services that will be subject to largest increases in registration fees. In responding to other aspects of the consultation, IWA considers that the proposals do not go nearly far enough in
incentivising low-carbon propulsion. The consultation also fails to address the impact of the proposals on the Gold Licence (the joint EA/CRT licence which is managed by CRT). IWA considers that EA has missed an opportunity to bring in a consistent charging regime across its three regions, which could have included a registration that allowed use of all EA waterways in the same way that a Gold Licence does. In our response, we asked for assurances that EA is making every effort to address the funding shortfall without placing the burden on boaters. Any increase in registration fees must be accompanied by increased enforcement in order to be effective. Given the wider benefits that waterways can bring to local communities and the economy, we believe it is also vitally important that the publicly-owned waterways run by EA receive additional funding from Defra, and this is something that IWA will continue to lobby Government about.
Winter 2021 19/10/2021 11:20
