BW have said that they have now made an interim assessment of the submissions made to two recent consultations; the Moorings consultation and the consultation which looked at developing local strategies. The moorings consutation generated 160 responses compared with 98 responses for the local strategies document.

An interim report showing a summary of the feedback received will be published by BW at the end of April. The amount of work involved in assessing each response meant that they had to recruit the assistance of 11 volunteers who took part in an exercise collating the complex issues and responses submitted so that BW can draw useful conclusions and make best use of the submissions.

As a next step BW have set up a workshop involving key boating organisations – NABO, IWA, AWCC & RBOA together with APCO representing the boating industries – marinas, hire boats and so on – who will meet in May to help in the process of drawing conclusions and recommendations for presentation to the BW board.

NABO will certainly be there and as soon as we can we will report on developments.

In the meantime, BW have concluded that because there was a clear majority supporting the concept of local mooring strategies they will be moving ahead with the first pilot project  for the Western end of the Kennet & Avon Canal, with an aim to have the steering group ready to meet by early June.

Howard Anguish