Money restraints sink plan to recover boats
Council and Environment Agency disagree over sunken vessel responsibility
A plan to remove sunken boats in the River Thames at Maidenhead has been left dead in the water as the council and Environment Agency tussle over responsibility, writes
Sam Leech.
Last year, plans were set in motion to fund the removal of five decaying boats, stranded by the riverside between Maidenhead Bridge and Boulter’s Lock.
However, this move – at a cost of around £7,000 according to the cabinet member for environmental services – was blocked by its spending control panel.
The council says it will now press the Environment Agency (EA), which it believes is responsible for the boats, but the agency hit back and claimed it is the council’s responsibility.
A council spokesperson said: “The removal of these sunken boats doesn’t fall within the council’s remit.
“The request was made as to whether additional funding could be found to do this but since the council is having to make very difficult choices in order to balance its budget and protect the delivery of core services, the spending control panel’s guidelines are clear that it cannot authorise spending large sums of money on things outside of the council’s responsibilities.
“For that reason, it had no choice but to turn it down.”
The spending control panel was introduced last year in response to the council’s perilous financial situation.
Its role is to scrutinise any discretionary spending the council wishes to make over £500.
Riverside councillor and cabinet member for environmental services Richard Coe (Lib Dem) said: “We really hit the buffers because it’s not technically the council’s responsibility, the [spending control] panel wasn’t going to authorise discretionary spending because it’s not really the council’s job.”
“We’re planning to write to them [EA] to see what they can do, we think all of this is really in their purview.
“So the campaign moves on to us writing to the EA.
“Like residents we’ve got frustrated with the lack of progress that we thought we could do ourselves.”
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In response, the Environment Agency said, as some of the boats are unnamed, it had been unable to trace or contact the owners which left them the responsibility of the landowner – and therefore this was the council’s job.
Cllr Coe had previously told the Advertiser that land ownership was an issue along the riverside, with ownership of some mooring areas not well-known.
An agency spokesman added: “Sunken boats are a blight on the waterway and are the responsibility of the owner to remove. We would intervene where a sunken boat is blocking river traffic or presents a pollution or flood risk, but that is not the case here.”
With the future of the wrecked boats uncertain, the council was still looking at ‘novel’ solutions.
“Obviously we’re very disappointed but we’re working very hard on alternative ways of getting the boats removed,” said Cllr Coe.
He said several residents had inquired about using them as garden planters, but would have to fund their removal themselves.
In addition, the council was looking into companies who might want to remove the boats free of charge, for publicity purposes.
There was also a chance that, if the council’s future financial position improved, its original plan could be revisited.
Cllr Coe said: “We hope the spending control panel doesn’t have to go on forever, it’s not impossible in the future that we could revisit it discretionarily.”
He added: “If there are any readers out there who want to give us £7,000 for that purpose
[of removing the boats] we’d like to know.”