We are reaching the end of the proceedings on the Growth and Infrastructure Bill which aims to increase economic growth by reducing the red tape and delays in the planning process.
Inevitably there are unintended consequences in such a far reaching measure – the position of the Canal and River Trust (‘CRT’) is one such.
This Conservative government and its Labour predecessor created an imaginative scheme whereby the old British Waterways Board was , with effect from July 2012, transferred into a new charitable trust, the CRT, which owns the canals inalienably (ie. they cannot be sold). This is a very imaginative way to address multiple challenges – preserving Britain’s industrial heritage (the CRT in the largest owner of listed structures after the Church of England and the National Trust), developing its leisure facilities (the CRT has 11 million visitors a year as well as encouraging biodiversity (canal banks, towpaths and reservoirs are rich natural habitants especially in urban areas).
Up to now as a statutory undertaking the old British Waterways Board had some special protection from unreasonable compulsory purchase orders. The CRT of course in its new guise will not be a statutory undertaking so it becomes vulnerable. This vulnerability is increased by the nature of the assets – they are linear and stretch into and through heavily populated industrial areas.
The Government have recognised the special position of the National Trust by retaining its existing protections under the new planning regime. But so far has not been prepared to give the same protection to the CRT.
This seems illogical – the CRT is essentially the National Trust on water and so its assets should be protected for the nation as the National Trusts are. As a final illogicality the National Trust already owns one canal – so that is protected. Why not the rest?
Private Eye has been covering the CRT problem for quite some time, questioning the points you correctly observe.
PS Under this site’s “The Authors” tab, I note that part of your entry reads:
“He was MP for Walsall North 1976 – 9 – his Opponent was John Stonehouse who disappeared to Australia.”
‘Disappeared’ hardly covers Mr Stonehouse’s resignation! (Surely, Mr David Winnick was your opponent?)
PPS This Government is still a coalition – unless you know something…
PPS This Government is still a coalition – unless you know something…
It sounded consentual last week, but the Labour party is not really interested in the frivolity of “Royal charters”. There are better ways, as discussed on this blog, some time ago, with the Lord Norton, but a conservative government does like to do things royally.
The 5 or 6 canals that lead in to or out of Birmingham (were they not the rationale for the
creation of UK’s second city?) would be vulnerable, which developers may well be hoping.
When you see the office block in the city of
London which leans over in to the “air” space of any other adjacent office block, you must realise that even large city planners are capable of idiotoic decisions.
The non-protection described, should be corrected! There is no sound reason for not doing so.
One wonders how longterm-dependent upon the Overall Ecolonomics of the Earth and of the Macroeconomics of Human Civilisations upon it
this relatively micro-economic canal problem might be ?
For instance, if this Earth can only longterm-support 3 billion humans
(or if it takes 100s of thousands of years to find an ‘Earth-Two’ and successfully space-emiograte to it, maybe hardly the longer that Emigration is going to take coming the fewer the Earth will be able to sustain, maybe even less than 1 million ?)
but is already being required to provide “Two Earthsworth” of lifesupports and technological non-renewables support for 7 billion people, and then three Earthsworth for a further 4 billion by 2050,
then Professor David Smith (TV Australian Environmental Studies course and acclaimed author of “Continent In Crisis”) was right in saying “When we are told that the Earth’s Resources are in a continual upward trend as evidenced by global GNPs and Stock Exchanges,
but in fact the Earth’s renewable as well as non-renewable resources are in an exponential decline,
“someone needs to get through to the economists that they have a fundamental equation wrong somewhere”.
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And what David was not given enough on-air time to warn, is that
(“) ultimate survival by space emigration, will require every rare and precious resource and element there is
(such as say ‘titanium”rubidium’ as well as gold, uranium, and copper whatever)
and probably aluminium and iron
but with the almost ‘infinite’ quantities of iron in stock being turned into steel at the expense of rarer metals and of other longterm-essential resources including rubber and plastics,
in a mere 1000 years time there may be no more of at least one essential but rare and non-renewable resource, without which space-emigration is going to be impossible.
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Possibly by striving for “more Growth” we are even worse “sawing off the branch upon which we must sit”.
As David Smith’s then ‘senior’ Environmental Studies professor Jonathan Stone warned in the same course,
(“)Our human race has by its destructiveness already literally become a ‘plague upon Earth'(“).
So what are the Facts, and the state-of-the-art Scrutinies and Reasonings about this Matter ?
Is the canal merely worth making the best of ‘short-term’, simply to help some of us to carry on and “live for today for tomorrow we die” ?