Following a complaint by a boater who spent half an hour on the phone while CRT staff tried to find details of the Annual Public Meeting that was due to take place in two weeks’ time, CRT has apologised for the time it took to provide the information. In addition, CRT, has agreed that in future, its Customer Services staff will be equipped with the information about the Annual Public Meeting; the meeting will be advertised on the Trust’s web site and in the Boaters’ Update, and will be publicised through “other appropriate communication channels”. Nicky Wakeford, CRT Marketing Manager, is responsible for the Annual Public Meeting.
The reason the boater needed to phone Customer Services was that the Annual Public Meeting was not advertised anywhere on the CRT web site, despite an extensive search of every possible page where it could have been advertised. Despite attending the BW AGMs in 2010 and 2011 and signing up to the list for attendance of the following years’ AGMs, the boater had never received notification of forthcoming Annual Meetings.
The boater complained that the Annual Public Meeting should have been advertised openly to the public because it is a public meeting, and that boat licence holders and CRT customers should have been able to find out about it with the minimum of inconvenience.
Tags: Canal and River Trust, meeting