Canal & River Trust Reviews 88

My husband and I had a wonderful day in Stratford on Avon. Took a river tour, Canal & River Tours, good price and excellent on bourd commentary about Stratford. The crew Dan & Dino were friendly and helpful. Including a little comedy show.
Highly recommended.

Absolutely appalling organisation, I sold my boat to a homeless person I had his name phone number and email address, I called CRT to let them know I had sold my boat , I was told I was still responsible for the river licence until I gave them a postal address for him , I gave them his name and phone number and email address, they sent me threatening letters, and after many phone calls and emails I finally got it sorted out, terrible people,fortunately I will never have to deal with them again.

I moor in stourport basin and use the river severn to go out through the sharpness canal to sea. It was always a reasonably easy trip. We pay roughly £700 per year for our licence. On 2 days a week there is only 1 lock keeper for 2 of the main river locks so we have wait while he drives between them. There are no water points or any pump out facilities on the river. The partins is usually a problem with over grown trees and sunken logs from the floods and no one dredges it. Gloucester Dock is now so badly silted up, you can't moor there. If you can go on the one wall on the right out of the lock you won't be able to get an electric card as they are sold by the museum and that's usually not open. It really makes our trips a nitemare. Im afraid the management are just not fit for purpose. It needs to be put back to how it was 30yrs ago so we can do some boating. It's just not fit for purpose and there is no duty of care.

Absolutely abysmal service!
the website won't let me on as its saying they don't recognise my email even though they sent the renewal reminder to it! Currently moored in Garstang which is mostly un-navigable due to the amount of build up round the edges of the canal and mooring is impossible. You should be ashamed of your company

The word incompetent was created for the management of this failing not fit for purpose charity. The amount of money they waste is sickening. They are destroying the country’s waterways.

It seems that there may be two clans at CART. Those on or around the canals, who tend to be be helpful and friendly and then those stuck in an office who tend to be bureaucratic and less than helpful.
Perhaps they need to get out more?
Unfortunately the office crowd seem to define how things are done.

I support the idea and work of the rivers trust. Unfortunately they seek support for their work with false information. I have emailed them in the past to rectify the oversite but nothing has been altered. The old Victorian sewer at the bottom of Victoria Road, Clacton on Sea was removed over ten years ago but is still shown on their current map as discharging sewage onto the beach. This is a lie and discredits their cause.

The CRT have one aim and that is to get boat owners off the rivers. The licence fee keeps increasing every year and the service gets worse.
The crt really start to make me wonder whether t worthwhile keeping on boating.
Tidal locks Cromwell ,Torksey etc need you to give two days notice to transit them, at one time somebody would generally be there at relevant tide times, not now! You can not always plan that far ahead.
Too many people on fat cat salaries!

An absolute disgrace!!
"Making life better by water"...for who?
They were formed as a "charity" to care for the canal system and all they appear to be doing is stripping it of it's assets.
They have sold off Listed buildings, land, workshops, got rid of the majority of it's staff while the network is falling apart.
Let's not forget the head people of this "charity" are on bigger salaries than the Prime Minister...... Shocking

Overly litigious. Not boater friendly. Needs replacing with more sympathetic management. Creates new unnecessary rules, regulations and controls faster than we boaters can keep pace with them. Also very expensive and difficult to deal with.

I have been boating on Crt waterways for the past 10 years and have watched the canals deteriorate over this time. Crt have moved away from preventative maintenance to a reactive system where infrastructure and services are left to fail totally before any money is spent on fixing them. This leads to regular failures and delays, not to mention things failing earlier than they should if they where properly maintained, costing far more in the long term. They went through an incredibly expensive unnecessary rebrand over the last couple of years wasting millions of pounds of licence and tax payers money. They continue to asset strip the waterways, selling off land to developers and pocketing the money in the form of higher management bonuses. It's sad watching a huge public asset be stripped and left to fall to ruin by an incompetent and unaccountable so called charity

Phoned customer services to report a porta potti dumped on the towpath on the Ashby canal by a disgusting boater. Removed the next day. Amazing quick service

The canal and river trust is frankly the worst part of owning a boat, they act like a dictatorship and they try to make out they are all about the environment and making life by water better, however their response to health and safety is beyond a joke, they refuse to listen to any form of appeal to their decisions, even if you have proof of their errors they just bury their heads and throw toys out of the pram. They’re maintenance boats do not follow the rules of the waterway and they appear to actually despise boats….on a canal

Made several calls to report fly tipping. I was transferred to the North West phone line. I was told beforehand they may be working from home. Phone was answered and l could hear a TV in the background and before l had chance to to talk the phone was hung up. I repeated phone call however this time when l was transferred to whoever is working on behalf of the North West, they didn't even bother answering phone and so after 5 minutes l put the phone down.
This will be the last time l attempt to report anything to this shoddy trust.

Many thanks to Andy, Stuart, Dave and John who helped me through the 21 locks at Wolverhampton.They are also responsible for keeping the area free from litter and the flight is noticeably cleaner than many other lock flights around the midlands.Keep up the great work guys!!

Dreadful organisation which engages in a public front of virtue signalling but when called to deal with very a serious public safety matter (for an issue within it’s jurisdiction) is shambolic in it’s response!

I have appealed to Richard Parry, CEO of the trust yet despite this escalating to a high level complaint (and the intervention of local officials) is still far off from being resolved 8 months after originally petitioning their help.

I can empathise entirely with the other reviewers on Trustpilot as their respective experiences have been been very similar to mine!

C&RT- read your reviews, we can’t all be wrong!

Board of Trustees- you need to set up an urgent enquiry into the corporate governance of the trust.

Shoddy, lazy, ignorant and useless organisation that bullies and intimidates.

The boastful material appearing on this organisation's website belies its indifference to its Health and Safety responsibilities.
In June my family experienced a "near-miss" incident on one of the Trust's poorly maintained and operated swing bridges at Saul Junction on the Sharpness Canal. To assist the Trust, I sent an email to the Customer Services staff setting out the risks and suggesting improvements at the site. I received a response promising that the matter would be referred to "the Regional Team". Since then, the Trust has ignored every follow-up email requesting details of the progress of its investigation.
Because the Customer Services department no longer appear to be interested, I wrote to the Headquarters staff at Ellesmere Port, but that letter has been ignored as well.
It is plain that the Canal and River Trust is very good at designing a website, but the promises made on that site do not match the Trust's activities on the ground.
Canals are well known as hazardous places, and it is astonishing that this huge organisation remains so relaxed about its Health and Safety obligations.

CRT seem to delight in antagonising boaters. There is nothing charitable about this organisation.