Executive Committee Summary - May 2021

 Amongst the many items discussed at the March Exec meeting, progress on the Melksham Link project is now being made. Wiltshire Council is working on a Conditional planning consent in collaboration with the Environment Agency. We have to complete work on an environmental metric for review by Wiltshire. We expect definitive news soon. 

Peter Scatchard, a long-standing Trust member who has taken over as Chair of the E Vale & Abingdon Branch, has produced a ten-year plan. Its basic content was accepted at the Exec and will be incorporated into some Trust-wide strategic planning that is already being developed. 

A Back to Business team has been assembled so that as soon as Covid restrictions, finance through fundraising (see elsewhere) and personnel resources permit, the Trust can get on with the canal restoration which is its main purpose.  

The Dragonfly team is engaged in refresher training for all its skippers & crew; this training will apply to The Mary Archard and other boats as they become available and will incorporate annual refreshers to keep everyone up to date.

Martin Stubbs is currently working on combining information from all the Trust's websites in an in-house intranet, resulting in more information being available, and more easily, for project management decision making.

We have begun advertising key vacancies on volunteering websites to attract the new faces we need to get Back to Business. We have identified 34 vacancies we need to fill across the whole range of our work, from stump removal to securing water for the future.