Question 13: How best can the NWC strike the right balance between local needs and the needs of the waterways network as a whole?
Question 14: How could the charity encourage effective working between different communities and partnerships that share the same waterway?
The consultation document proposes that Local Partnerships should meet no less than four times per year with an Open Meeting once a year. It proposes that the Chair would be the ambassador for the Partnership and an ex officio member of the Charity’s Council, drawing his/her authority from considered views of the Partnership and the policies and approaches agreed at their business meetings.
The views of the Waterways Project with regard to the governance and structure of the of the NWC and the role of the Local Partnerships has been expressed elsewhere, however we view the issues raised in question’s 13 and 14 as critical – indeed they drove the establishment of The Waterways Project when the intention to create the NWC was first announced.
We believe that a key issue for British Waterways has been that, as a public body, it has sought to mediate and regulate the tensions arising from conflicting and changing local uses of the waterways. Whilst we recognise the pressing need to balance the needs of different user groups with the needs of the network as whole we do not believe that this is best achieved through top down directives or centralised mediation.
Local needs and priorities must be set locally and any tensions and conflicts resolved between local users. Local communities should also be able to utilise the waterways asset to deliver their own local social, economic and environmental objectives – provided these do not jeopardise the needs of the network as whole and are balanced against those of other more distant stakeholders. We believe that the core competency of BW / NWC is the maintenance of the navigation and some national commercial activities. It should focus on delivering these and enable others to utilise the asset for wider benefit and shared financial reward. We believe that it can best encourage effective partnership working between different communities by giving them real ownership and influence and getting out of their way.
Our response to questions 13 and 14:
The Waterways Project believes that one of the key issues that has faced British Waterways over recent years has been that it frequently has to mediate local disputes from a national perspective. As a national public body it has been characterised by a centralised, top down approach to undertaking its business.
Over the course of its history the canal network has been both a national and regional asset supporting industry and leisure. More recently it has established a new value as hyper local amenity for canalside communities who visit for recreation and amenity reasons, as well as the increasing number of people choosing to live on the waterways.
Whilst the maintenance of the physical asset, a national network with high costs of upkeep, is best undertaken by a national body, we believe that as a local resource supporting local communities it is important that local stakeholders have as great a degree of ownership and control of the waterways as possible. The balance between the needs of a wide variety of local stakeholders is best struck at the most local level where the necessary compromises can be agreed and delivered.
It is for this reason that we believe the Local Partnerships should be much more local than currently envisaged, that where possible the physical non navigation assets should be managed by capable local community organisations for local social, economic and environmental benefit, and that the NWC should, from the outset, seek to create a new and diverse membership base based on those who pay licence fees, leases, commercial rents or membership fees.
It is vital that if the new organisation is to realise its transformative ambitions, and if local communities and the wider public are to have a real sense of ownership, the centre should be accountable to the localities rather than the other way around.
Whilst it is legitimately the role of the centre to balance maintenance and restoration priorities across the network, operational budgets and decisions should be devolved to local business units and spending priorities agreed locally in partnership with Local Partnerships.
Question 15: In what ways could people be helped to become more involved and take more responsibility for their local waterways? What might the barriers be, and how could they be overcome?
The preamble to questions 15, 16 and 17 discusses the importance of volunteers to the waterways and sets the aim of NWC having 5,000 regular volunteers contributing 80,000 working days to the waterways upkeep by 2020. It goes on to provide two examples of volunteering on the waterways and an example of volunteering at The National Trust. A description of the establishment of the pilot local partnership on the Kennet and Avon Canal is also included.
We believe that a sense of ownership and shared endeavour are critical to people becoming more involved in taking responsibility for their local waterways. This means that they should see the waterways as an asset that helps them to deliver on their social, economic and environmental priorities – not simply a leisure or heritage asset for use or enjoyment by others. As a result of our work, and from wide ranging conversations with other national environmental organisations and policy makers, the Waterways Project believes that enabling local communities to gain access to under-managed NWC assets (land and buildings) could help to deliver a wide range of local social benefits such as renewable energy, local food, affordable sustainable housing and small enterprise opportunities, giving the new charity a clear social purpose and restoring the historic role of the waterways in delivering economic benefits to the communities serves.
From our experience of speaking with local community organisations across England and Wales, and interviewing both local social entrepreneurs and local and national British Waterways staff, we believe the main barriers to improved community involvement are internal to British Waterways. Whilst recognising the goodwill and genuine interest of many staff, the structure, culture and operations of the organisation mitigate against effective and committed approaches to community engagement. This is exacerbated by current reductions in staffing, restructuring and organisational uncertainty.
It is imperative that the new organisation rapidly develops a new culture and that the structure, governance, mission and vision of the NWC all support a transformational change which devolves power and resources away from central headquarters to local areas and local communities.
Our response to question 15:
Local involvement is best driven by a sense of ownership and responsibility. The current culture of British Waterways and the proposals for the new charity are designed to maximise central control. Volunteering opportunities are defined and recruited for by the centre.
A sense of ownership can be engendered by ensuring that the organisation has a broad-based and diverse membership – this should be a key priority of the new charity – to gain a new understanding of its stakeholders and beneficiaries beyond the existing user groups, and to recognise and maximise the social economic and redistributional benefits of the waterways.
The new charity should adopt a presumption in favour of community management of all non navigation assets and energetically promote this as a new approach to meaningful community engagement. It should have a clear and ambitious target for new leasing arrangements or community partnerships.
The key barrier to communities becoming more involved and taking more responsibility for their local waterways will be the continuation of a culture of top down control. ‘Letting go’ of control to local communities will be a transformational change for the new organisation and will require a new attitude and approach both from the organisation and from individual staff members. It is for these reasons that it is imperative that a new localising approach is reflected in the news charity’s mission and vision, in its structures and governance, and in the powers it is given by Ministerial Order. The message and the mandate must be clear that the charity intends to manage the canals with a clear social purpose in order to support local communities – not, as currently framed, that it requires the engagement of local communities in order to support the upkeep of the canals.
As well as cultural and organisational issues there are practical operational issues. Existing staff will require training on community engagement skills, understanding the needs of community organisations and social enterprise and the benefits that they can bring. They must have an explicit remit to engage, to be open to community utilisation of the asset and to manage it for social benefit. Given the transaction costs of engaging with local communities the new charity should also consider how it can work in partnership with established community networks and organisations such as Development Trusts who may be able to act as effective local intermediaries and asset managers and more easily access local funding streams.
Question 16: In what ways could more people be encouraged to volunteer for the waterways? What might the barriers be and how could they be overcome?
Question 17: What would a successful volunteer program look like? What would it achieve?
The Waterways Project has chosen not to focus on volunteering. The rationale for this is that it is not an area that the project team has any specific expertise in and this is an area that BW and other stakeholders have, and continue to develop, a strong expertise in.
One area worth noting, however, is the inclusion of volunteer activity into the Impact Assessment calculations as new income. This new income, valued in 2020 at £2.5million per annum, is potentially obfuscating as the consultation specifies that this would “support works and projects that are currently unaffordable”. On this basis it would appear safe to assume that voluntary income, in effect sweat equity and not real income, may contribute to non essential maintenance works and as such may have a negligible cost saving impact on assets in poor or very poor condition. Further, in reality the utilisation of such voluntary labour will have associated cash costs and therefore may actually increase costs to NWC. Detail provided in the Impact Assessment does not allow for this level of investigation to be undertaken by readers.
Our response to questions 16 and 17:
The Waterways Project understands and celebrates the work of volunteers on the waterways, historically, currently and in moving forward into the future of NWC. It acknowledges the excellent work undertaken by BW and a very many waterways stakeholders over the decades preceding the move to becoming a new charity. The Waterways Project does not feel it has the relevant expertise to comment on what might be termed ‘traditional volunteering’ on the waterways and leaves this area to stakeholders with relevant expertise.
There are however three issues with respect to the recruitment of volunteers that we do wish to comment upon on the basis of the current moves by British Waterways to increase its use of volunteers throughout its operations.
Firstly we are concerned that currently the organisation is focussing on large scale corporate volunteering programmes in order to recruit volunteers to undertake work identified by British Waterways. We believe that good community engagement, working with communities using a community development approach to identify their needs, priorities and capacity will provide a more engaged and committed local volunteer force addressing issue of real local concern.
Secondly some of the roles currently advertised by British Waterways as volunteering opportunities would be more appropriately advertised as paid positions on a temporary or permanent basis. These include roles within enterprise, customer service, HR and policy teams. The use of volunteers for such roles raises similar issues to the use of unpaid interns. The opportunities presented are only accessible to those who are either affluent or retired, or both. An increasing use of such practices will result in the organisation becoming even less diverse than it currently is, rather than reflecting the diversity of the communities it seeks to serve and engage.
Thirdly it is clear that best practice in volunteering is where volunteering is locally driven according to local priorities and need. Volunteering should not be used as a cheap way of filling legitimate long term posts.
The Waterways Project believes that getting more people involved with and taking more responsibility for the waterways is best realised by engaging meaningfully with the broadest possible range of relevant stakeholders on their terms and in ways that help them to realise their objectives, needs and ambitions. We believe that this will be the most effective way to foster commitment and a sense of ownership in the waterways. The Waterways Project advocates a central role, alongside that of traditional volunteering, to social enterprise and community asset development activity to stimulate a step change in levels of public engagement with the waterways.
For such a programme to achieve this it needs to do more than encourage people to volunteer their time. Genuine engagement will not happen unless communities are given a stake in the management of their canal. The governance and community engagement framework detailed in our responses to questions 8 and 18 we believe are worthy of further exploration by Defra and BW to stimulate this desired level of new engagement.
By seeking to ensure comprehensive community engagement throughout the governance of NWC, as advocated throughout this consultation response, increasing involvement and responsibility of stakeholders at a local level is addressed at the very heart of NWC and in all that it will be undertaking. In this way barriers are designed out of the new organisation’s modus operandi rather than identified and overcome.
By positioning itself at the head of the localism agenda, rather than adopting an apparently ‘safe’ but increasingly outmoded centralised structure, the NWC is also likely to be well placed to take advantage of new trends in funding as well as completely new financing mechanisms such as the Big Society Bank.
BW is under resourced and working to a very short timetable for conversion to NWC. This risks leading to a transfer of organisational culture that, while in principle willing, has been ill configured to engage with local communities and a structure, mission and governance that is both defensive and backward looking rather than truly transformational and able to deliver effectively in a new context of localism.
Local communities hold much of the solution for NWC, both financially and in realising public benefit, it is therefore imperative that all levels of BW/NWC and Defra make and resource a substantial commitment to pursuing engagement with local communities as a new way of doing business.
Recent Discussions