[CUCBC Captains] CamCons Fees Consultation

[Conor Burgess]

Hi all,

Following on from the Captains’ Meeting, please find attached the documents which John and Bill have put together based on their insights into the Conservancy. Additionally, I also include the Conservators recent announcement of their restructuring (only published last week, right towards the end of the consultation period) and an additional paper which explains their rationale for this restructure in greater detail. Whilst the fee increases and the restructuring are in theory separate, I’d be surprised if the timing and motivations behind them are not linked.

Ultimately, the headline figure is that the Conservators income from rowing vessels, if the proposed fees are accepted by the Conservators, will increase by around 38% in a single year, and go on to increase further over subsequent years at a rate which will still exceed the likely increases in inflation / CPI.

You can find the consultation documents here: https://www.camconservancy.org/about-1 <https://www.camconservancy.org/about-1>

Please note that John’s document was written before the question numbers were fixed; what were Q11-13 are now Q10-12. 

For Q8 I’d suggest you consider only the costs they ask about; i.e. owning and operating your boats, and not your club’s expenses as a whole, or boathouse costs etc. The only other fees that you likely pay to own and operate your boats specifically are insurance and (if applicable) racking fees, so Cam Conservators License Fees may amount to a large proportion of the “overall cost of owning or operating your boats”.

For Q9, you might mention other things that you’d have to cut back on to afford the increase, e.g. coaching or updating equipment etc.

For Q11, a large proportion of the Conservators income is from commercial vessels (and in particular commercial punts) - these vessels generate income and thus you could argue that charging them more is entirely fair and appropriate, rather than increasing the fees applied to people who are trying to use the river to keep fit and healthy.

For the final question, you might like to mention who your response represents, as I don’t see how they’ll know who’s responded otherwise. This is where you can put together your impassioned arguments about how the proposed fee increases will reduce accessibility to the river for health and wellbeing purposes, or the crippling impact of a potentially 60% increase in costs (if you register mostly eights) when your budgets for the year have likely been set and agreed already (or will be soon), or even question why the Conservancy aren’t doing more to source funding from other avenues, such as the City and County Councils etc.

As a final reminder, the consultation is only open until the 25th October, so please do take 10-15 minutes to respond this week.

Best wishes,
Conor

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