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.
Mr Grimes told the NBTA in an email that: “I have announced today that I will be leaving the Trust shortly and therefore would suggest, for the moment that any day to day issues are addressed with my team via the normal contacts & channels and should you have any wider issues these be raised with Ian Rogers until my replacement is recruited”.
The NBTA is in contact with several CRT staff including the Head of Boating, with liaison meetings taking place from time to time.
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 the Bargee Traveller community on CRT waterways forced to take licences of less than 12 months and a number forced off the waterways altogether.
Perhaps 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, to the NBTA’s knowledge, of working in an organisation that routinely threatened people with the loss of their homes.
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