Mike Grimes, Canal & River Trust’s (CRT) Head of Boating, has today announced his resignation from the post after only 22 months. Mike Grimes headed the boating team from August 2015. He joined CRT as Head of Business Boating in April 2015. He said he has “regrettably” decided to step down.
Mr Grimes had not previously been involved in waterways and his move to CRT coincided with the start of its draconian and punitive enforcement policy against boaters without home moorings, which has seen more than one third of our community forced to take 6-month licences or driven off the waterways altogether.
We wonder whether presiding over a policy that threatens to make so many people homeless was a factor in his resignation after such a short time in post. Mr Grimes spent a large part of his career working for British Airways, most recently as head of customer operations at Gatwick, before leaving in 2014 to restore a historic property in the Fens. He had no previous experience, as far as we know, of working in an organisation that routinely threatened people with eviction and seizure of their homes.
On the other hand, perhaps he saw the writing on the wall, given that DEFRA refused to release the 2016 CRT Protector Report, which assesses CRT’s financial health. See this Freedom of Information request by Allan Richards:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/protector_report#incoming-909857
The report has since been published on CRT’s web site here https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/media/original/30947-protectors-report-2016.pdf
This was CRT’s news item about Mr Grimes’s appointment in August 2015:
https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/news-and-views/news/new-head-of-boating-appointed
See also http://kanda.boatingcommunity.org.uk/curiouser-and-curiouser-crt-appoints-new-head-of-boating/
http://kanda.boatingcommunity.org.uk/gitgate/
http://kanda.boatingcommunity.org.uk/how-much-has-sally-ash-cost-boaters/
http://kanda.boatingcommunity.org.uk/sally-ash-rewarded-for-ruining-the-lives-of-boat-dwellers/
Tags: CRT management structure, Head of Boating, Ian Rogers, Mike Grimes