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Page 1 of 2 FOLLOWING governments' condemnation of public sector fat cats and its publication of a rich list of those earning over £150,000, IWA has published in its Bulletin a comparison between BW's executive directors and the third sector, writes Allan Richards.
Unfortunately, the Inland Waterways Association's attack is somewhat reminiscent of the one made by Tory minister Geoffrey Howe on Labour's Dennis Healey some 30 years ago. Healey dismissed the attack by saying it was 'like being savaged by a dead sheep'.
 Saying nothing
So what did the IWA say? Well nothing much really! It simply collated information from BW's annual report and those of the National Trust, RNLI and RSPB. It made no attempt to convert the information so that a direct comparison could be made. In particular, the salary of individual BW directors is given to the nearest pound but for third sector organisations it is organised as number of (unnamed) employees within £10,000 salary bands. What use is that?
Worse still, IWA makes absolutely no commentary whatsoever on the figures. One assumes they are trying to make some point about excessive directors salaries but what is it? Why no campaign?
Too little, too late
Politicians of all parties have criticised the BW fat cats. narrowboatworld has criticised them and even Waterways World have criticised them. A year late, IWA publishes some figures but leaves us in the dark. Criticism is implied rather than made.
It was over a year ago, in July 2009, that narrowboatworld exposed the hypocrisy of BW maintaining that it wanted to become a waterways version of the National Trust without a plan to align its governance salary structure. We said:
'So how does BW stack up against NT with regard to salaries for the top people? To make comparison fair, it must be stressed that NT has a far larger income—almost £400m against BW's £220m (2007/8). Also, NT has to earn all this income—BW is simply given a third of its income by the government.
NT's governance staff costs for 2007/8 were just £1,003,000. BW's were £1,932,000.
Put another way, the National Trust is about twice as large as British Waterways in terms of income. It manages to generate three times BW's income itself (i.e. excluding government grant) but its equivalent of BW's directors salary bill is half.
In 2007/8, Robin Evans BW's chief executive, was paid £284,000 despite a dramatic drop in boaters customer satisfaction and BW's joint ventures producing a loss. His opposite number in NT was paid about £175,000. In the same year BW's part time chairman, Tony Hales, was paid about £49,000—his NT opposite number provided services free'.
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