Posts Tagged ‘Wiltshire County Council’

Payments from Local Councils to BW amount to £550,000

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

At one of the meetings between boaters, BW and Wiltshire Council Ken Oliver, Wiltshire Council’s Canal Officer, made a comment about the amount of money that Councils pay each year to BW. Wanting to know the amounts and what this money was for I made FOI requests to BW, Wiltshire Council, B&NES and West Berkshire Council, asking for amounts that they had paid to or received from BW in the last five years.

As usual, the figures received from the Councils and from BW don’t match, but judging from the recent totally inaccurate FOI replies from BW I feel it is more likely the Council ones are accurate. The amounts in total come to a massive £552,955 paid to BW over a five-year period.

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Bradford on Avon Area Board to discuss mooring strategy

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

The local mooring strategy will be discussed at the Wiltshire Council Bradford on Avon Area Board on 21st July at Westwood Social Club, Leslie Rise, Lower Westwood. Please attend if you can. The venue is open from 6.30pm and the meeting starts at 7pm. The minutes and other information from the Bradford on Avon Area Board can be found at

http://cms.wiltshire.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=220&MId=799&Ver=4

See also http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/communityandliving/areaboards.htm for information about all the Area Boards.

Boaters attend Wiltshire Area Board meetings

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Boaters have attended the Wiltshire Council Area Board Meetings at Trowbridge and Pewsey recently. Here’s a report from the Trowbridge Area Board on 1st July.

Wiltshire Council’s canal officer Ken Oliver gave a brief update on the outcome of the recent meeting between BW, boaters and Wiltshire Council in Devizes on 1 June. He only spoke for about 5 minutes as Councillor Osborn had somewhat hijacked the meeting due to being unhappy about a £500,000 hole in library budgets.

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Report of Community Involvement in Managing Local Moorings meeting

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

The meeting on June 1st about Community Involvement in Managing Local Moorings was organised by Wiltshire Council to discuss BW’s proposals for a local mooring strategy between Bath and Devizes. About 150 people attended. Damian Kemp was the only BW representative there. The meeting was chaired by Councillor Fleur de Rhé Phillippe.

Damian announced that BW would be going ahead with its plan for a local mooring strategy for the western Kennet and Avon between Bath and Devizes. He explained how the local mooring strategy steering group would work.

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Public Meeting on Local Moorings Strategies, June 1st in Devizes

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

BW is to hold a public meeting on June 1st, at Devizes Corn Exchange at 6.30pm, to announce its plan to go ahead with local mooring strategies. This is despite the fact that 73 of the 98 responses to the consultation on developing local mooring strategies, and 88 out of 161 responses to the national consultation, opposed the plan. Quite a few boaters are planning to go to this meeting. It is an opportunity to tell BW what we think of the proposals. Anyone can attend but you need to book a place. The meeting is being hosted by Wiltshire Council. If you want to go, contact Margaret Tipper at Wiltshire Council on 01225 718441 or email her:  margaret.tipper@wiltshire.gov.uk

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Council Tax and Liveaboard Boaters

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

There have been a number of accusations recently that boaters do not pay Council Tax and so should not benefit from local services. This is incorrect. British Waterways pays the Government a composite levy in respect of Council Tax and Business Rates. This is collected centrally and the income is used to offset general central Government payments to local authorities through the Rate Support Grant. Therefore, anyone who pays a boat licence fee to BW contributes to this composite levy in respect of Council Tax.

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Consultation stitch-up at Kennet and Avon User Group meeting

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Although 73 out of 98 responses to the consultation on local mooring strategies opposed the idea, BW has said it will go ahead and start setting up the first local mooring strategy group on the Kennet and Avon between Devizes and Bath. BW justifies this by saying that many of the consultation responses were from groups and so these responses were treated as being from the total number of their membership rather than one response. I believe that this completely discredits the consultation process

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The full presentation to the Area Board

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Presentation to Wiltshire Council Bradford on Avon Area Board, 21 January 2010, by Kennet and Avon boaters.

The boating community is going to present the moral, legal and business arguments concerning the British Waterways consultation on local mooring strategies.

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The presentation to the Area Board

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Here’s the precis of Panda’s presentation to the Area Board for Bradford-on-Avon on Thursday 21st January 2010. It will form the basis for a press release to present the positive role of the boat dwellers amongst the local community, show how the threat to the boater’s lifestyle is a cause for concern throughout the community and ask the council to exercise their duty of care towards boaters as travellers.

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A tale of two councils

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

One one hand we have B&NES, an authority whose domain the canal runs through from Hanham up to the exact middle of Dundas aqueduct.

On the other the successful meeting with representatives of Wiltshire County Council in Holt last week.

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