Meeting Notes Regional Advisory Board Meeting, Coombeswood Canal Trust Attendees Actions Peter Mathews CMG PM Viv Biggs VB Ian Lane IL Len Cresswell LC Graham Fisher MBE GF Richard Preston RP John Harris JH Phil Bateman MBE PB Stephen Hardy SH John McNicholas JM Bashir Ahmed BA Yvonne Moore YM Apologies Laura Shoaf, Imran Mirzha Welcome & apologies PM welcomed everyone to the meeting and introduce Yvonne Moore who will be continuing with the secretariat until VB’s replacement is appointed. Apologies were acknowledged. LS has asked PM if she can send a sub from The West Midlands Authority, PM will let VB have their name and details. At next month’s meeting there will be two people joining us from Wales & Borders and the Montgomery restoration. Meeting notes and matters arising from last meeting. The meeting notes were reviewed and agreed. Declaration of Interest No new declarations. Introductions PM gave some background on what is currently happening in the waterways. As PM’s time is now up there are couple of people being considered for the Chair’s position, and he would like to pass everything on for the meeting in September. He stressed how important it is that one thing we need to carry forward is the ‘Teamwork and communications’. A trip is being arranged for the Highways Agency to visit the viaduct at Oldbury and will take place on 5th July when PM would like to take the opportunity to work with them in the future. JH informed everyone that they are now known as Highways England and as their network and ours cross over it would be a good partnership to have. They have a lot of funding from Government and are very keen to use this for Titford Pools. PM has invited JH and RP on the trip and dependent on how many people Highways bring along he may be able to extend the invite to other members if they are interested. There may also be a consideration for someone from Highways to join the Board. JM mentioned the Smart Motorway Project that is taking place along the M6 J2 to J4 and runs adjacent to the canal, he is going to take the opportunity to see if we can tap into the funding that is available. On August 22nd there is a boat trip planned with Patrons of Birmingham Chamber of Commerce where there will be lead businesses on board, the trip will include a visit to The Roundhouse. IL updated everyone on the current waterway changes which means that from 4th June there are now only 6 waterways, and circulated the map showing new boundaries, where West Midlands has gained another 200k of canals. Now we are still in a transition period and it is only the Operations teams that have moved into the new regions. Everyone else in the business will remain as they are until the new Regional Directors come on board in July/ August. Adnan Saif will be the RD for West Midlands and IL will invite him along to the next meeting. IL will be handing over to Adnan on 6th August but will remain within West Midlands as Head of Operational Projects. Julie Sharman already has her structure in place with the Heads of Operations, Customer Service and Technical. The waterway aim is to bring more local power to the regions, although currently it has not been confirmed where everyone will sit until the new RD’s are in place. Heather Clarke, Head of Strategy, Impact & Engagement Director is fully behind the Strategy focus for the Black Country & West Midlands and the Trust is happy to put resources into these areas. The new regions are now aligned with the political boundaries and this is a change that can only be for the better. JM asked what sort of liabilities we may have coming from the other regions. IL is not sure of any implications yet although all Central teams will keep managing as normal. He informed us that we will be picking up some good Projects including The River Severn Fish Passes. Although we will not be looking after the river GF is keen to campaign for this as in YM theory it is within the new border. IL will get a list of the new things that we will be picking up including high risk and the good projects. PM asked YM if she could circulate the new map of the West Midlands region. Media Updates GF is still working on the digitisation programme which is progressing with the digital team in MK. The proposal is to spread the message to other Boards about what we are doing. He asked PM /IL for a letter of introduction to the Chairs and would like to pass this over to someone when he leaves in November. Although finishing in November GF will be doing some work in an independent role promoting digitisation. He was recently approached by Walk, Cycle, Run who would like to work alongside the Trust hoping to link in with them to their website and is a work in progress. GF was sad to report that the paddle steamer, Oliver Cromwell had recently sunk. This was the largest floating Hotel boat on the waterways and was on its way to Ireland when it sank in Anglesey. The proprietors, English Holiday Cruises Ltd., were supporters of the Midlands waterways in general and of GF, and he would like to seek recognition of their contribution and their loss. – you can read the full report on Graham’s website: http://grahamfisher.co.uk/bits-n-bobs Chance Glassworks is still waiting for site clearance and there is only one person here who won’t move. They are just waiting for Sandwell Council to get the compulsory purchase. On Wednesday this week GF was invited to talk on Radio WM where he spoke for an hour and got a mention in for the Trust. He has an invitation to go back and would like to SH promote us further with a live broadcast boat trip. Which SH will pick up and see if he can get radio WM to spend a week on the canal. SH will circulate the broadcast link. GF reminded everyone to email him with details of any events so that they can be advertised free on Black Country Radio. SH informed us that there has been a lot of coverage for the Repositioning and Well-being and has a lot of local and national interest. We have had some coverage on BBC Countryfile last week and this week we will be on Gardeners World. During the transition SH will cover East and West Midlands with help from Lyn Pegler. JM may have an interest to declare as he is considering becoming Lord Mayor in 2021. He was delighted to have been invited to the Basin with the National Planning Team which had a very interesting outcome and one he will be taking to the Scrutiny Committee taking on board recommendations from the Trust. He met with Nick Cleaver and is looking forward to developing a relationship at a local level and hopes to meet with the Chamber very soon. The Council have leased a part of the basin to an inappropriate person which JM will be picking up with the Council later today. PB picked up on the breach on the W & E as he had received a lot of messages and after a few calls to IL it all became clear, and just shows that the success of everything is down to clear communication which has a lot of power. His web page then helped to get this information out to people who were concerned about the loss of water. He has a meeting with the Council today about the local Nature Reserve which is moving forward. RP added that the final agreement from Wolverhampton is now with Peter Birch, National Environment Manager, waiting to be signed off. RP will chase this up. LC commented on the Canalwatch report from IM which shows quite a large amount of crime data. He is concerned that as this includes 50m either side of the canal it is giving us a bad press. PM advised that this was the influence that IM wanted to have by including this data, and whilst IL agrees that people’s perception of the canal is dark and dangerous in places the report shows that the crime is only within 50m of the canal and not all on canal itself. As a boater LC is signed up to WM NOW but he has not received any notifications even though he has ticked the relevant boxes and does not think it is working properly. Also, there is nothing on the Trust’s website to say that we are on board. How is Trust going to develop this? JH advised that he has had one alert regarding an assault in Tyseley. GF agreed that it is really people’s perception that canals are not a very nice place to visit on the BCN, but there is a lot less crime along here than there was many years ago. He thinks that this is a job for the PR Team. PM can help with this and will have a word with IM to see how WM NOW needs to be tweaked and asked LC to send him a note to this effect. LC thanked IL for sending out information regarding Earlswood where the water had seeped into people’s homes, and which was not the fault of the Trust.