Re: A logical solution?

In message <eqou93hcp4iufn2u2fq0m5buc6b5uk6er3@xxxxxxx>, Adrian Stott <adrian@xxxxxxxx> writes
On Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:26:12 +0100, Martin Phillips
<martin@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

So, what does the government do? It sets up a Nuclear Decommissioning
Agency (NDA), with a budget to pay for the liabilities, which it now
owns, drawn down from the government.

An important difference between this and the waterways is that with
Nuclear the government has committed to keep paying for the
liabilities. As the DEFRA cuts show, it has *not* done this for the
waterways maintenance liabilities.

And as recent history has also shown, the government is putting the squeeze on the NDA. Hence, I think we're agreeing, don't trust the government.

The operations of the plant and
the management of the sites are sold on the open market. The deal with
the new management companies is that if they meet performance targets
for completion of agreed work programmes they get a tidy fee.

Why weren't the plants "sold" to the management companies (less the
decomissioning liabilities), which could then make a profit if they
ran them efficiently, or a loss if they didn't.

In the case of nuclear plant, because the majority of the ones owned by the NDA are already in various degrees of decommissioning. The only ones worth anything are a couple of power plants due to shut down in 1 and 3 years respectively, and part of the Sellafield reprocessing complex which has a potentially long life.

The analogous question is "could a waterway pay its way without external funding"? As I think you've said, not without an endowment of a property portfolio or somesuch. Without doing the sums, I suspect there are but a few waterways - maybe only a few small lengths of a few waterways - which could pay their way on direct fee income from the users.

Thus no need for the
government to pay them further fees, which is a scheme which to me is
a bit too reminiscent to the botched method used to privatise the
railways (if only the government had recreated the GWR!)..

Let's think about how it might work for the canals. The new BWA invites tenders for the running of, say, the GU. They have a programme of capital works which they will require to be undertaken on perhaps a five year plan. They will set targets for routine maintenance, response to breakdowns, availability of the system etc. The bidders come in with an offer for running the canal and managing its staff for a fixed term, with an agreed fee for the service and a pain-or-gain sharing scheme for exceeding or underperforming targets.

This is exactly how the nuclear industry is now run. I'm not sure how close it is to the railways. It sounds a lot more plausible as a model than a straight privatisation of the waterways, and it might be a more credible model than the current one. Whether it's the right model is another question....

Wassail!
--
Martin E Phillips nb Boden, Splatt Bridge
http://www.g4cio.demon.co.uk martin/at/g4cio/dot/demon/dot/co/dot/uk
Homebrewing, black pudding, boats, morris dancing, ham radio and more!
The Gloucester-Sharpness canal page http://www.glos-sharpness.org.uk
.

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