Canal & River Trust (CRT) has restructured its enforcement team so that most enforcement staff (who were re-branded as Boat Licence Customer Support staff in 2017) are now managed by the regional directors, who were appointed following restructuring of the navigation authority in summer 2018. Regional enforcement supervisors; enforcement officers and data checkers are all now managed from each of CRT’s six regional directorates.
The change is likely to include more redundancies among middle management in the CRT enforcement team, following a three month statutory consultation period that began in mid-November 2018. Former Head of Boating Enforcement Denise Yelland left CRT in 2018 and has been replaced by Head of Boat Licence Customer Support Matthew Aymes. The central team also includes data analyst and former enforcement officer Jane Lee.
When pressed by the NBTA to explain how CRT would ensure that enforcement decisions were consistent between regions, Head of Customer Service Support Jon Horsfall stated that the central team under Matthew Aymes would be responsible for ensuring that practices and procedures were consistent across regions. The NBTA will be keeping a close eye on the consistency of CRT enforcement decisions.
The restructuring mirrors the structure of the enforcement teams before the 2009 reorganisation of British Waterways, when enforcement was carried out on a regional basis with a small central management team.