IWA Welcomes British Waterways’ Budget Allocation Announcement

The Inland Waterways Association (IWA) welcomed the announcement by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs ( DEFRA) yesterday confirming that the settlement for British Waterways of grant-in-aid of £57.64million would be inline with expectations, as promised by the Minister, and not subject to any further cuts.

DEFRA also announced that the Environment Agency grant would amount to £796million, although the Agency has yet to announce what proportion of this it will allocate towards navigation.

Speaking on behalf of IWA, John Fletcher, national chairman, said;
“IWA is acutely aware that this flat cash settlement is really a cut, once the level of inflation is taken into account. Whilst we are disappointed that the current financial climate and previous mismanagement of DEFRA’s budget have made it impossible to reinstate the previous levels of grant-in-aid to the navigation authorities, it could have been much worse. We are, however, pleased that all of the hard work put in by our members in lobbying their MPs to protect what funding was available, in the immediate period before Christmas has paid off. I would like to personally thank everyone for the tremendous effort that was put in to protect the allocation, during the department’s budget review process”.

“We welcome the positive influence of the new Waterways Minister, Jonathan Shaw MP and the hard work of his officials in ensuring British Waterways’ budget has not been yet further reduced after the major cuts experienced last year, despite the Department’s difficult financial position”.

“If IWA has a criticism in all of this, it is that we are disappointed at British Waterways’ lamentable lack of visibility in fighting for its share of grant, and thus failing to champion the waterways in this process. It appears to IWA, that this passivity is the principle reason that caused British Waterways to have to withdraw from the Cotswold Canal partnership. British Waterways appears to have abdicated its leadership role in the development of the waterways and seems to be leaving the voluntary sector to take up the yoke. Notwithstanding 60 years of campaigning by IWA, some things don’t appear to have changed. The need for an active waterways campaign movement today is a great as ever.”

The DEFRA budget allocation can be seen at: http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/busplan/spending-review/budget0809.htm