Does the EA license money help you catch mores fish?

What do you think ? Remember I mean just your license money not the EA generally.

I suppose if you just fished commercials you might think - NO the EA have no affect on how much I catch, but if you fish rivers you might think differently ?

I wonder what people's views are

I've little doubt that license money has benefitted the catches of some anglers. However, due to the locations I'm fishing, including the local river, I don't feel that I've seen much benefit myself. I've heard of no EA stockings of my local river in many years. The only works I know of has been weir modifications to install new, or upgrade existing, fish ladders.
Excluding salmon and sea trout, funding seems to operate on a system of greatest need rather than a more even spreading of benefit. That might be fair enough if it didn't often seem some of the rivers are a distinct case of good money being thrown after bad.

It also concerns me that, rather than for a distinct case greater good, our money is actually benefitting private individuals and landowners. Improving a watercourse and the fish in it may be beneficial to all, including anglers. However, only the landowners benefit financially from this public largesse. Only if a watercourse or stillwater is genuinely open access can I easily see the justification for spending license fee money on improving it. I don't suppose that the EA will ever turn up to stock my stillwater syndicate, quite understandably, but they'll happily do so on a river. Outside of free stretches, this only benefits a relatively small percentage of anglers. Rivers are no more a genuine public amenity than a club, syndicate or commercial stillwater is. I fail to see the real difference.

I'd also question whether these supposedly for the greater good improvements should be funded by just anglers. If they really are for the greater good, not just for the benefit of angling and anglers, then there's justification for the wider tax budget paying for it.

Sorry Benny - could you please define the scope of the question - how would you distinguish between EA Statuatory obligations funded from general taxation and those that are funded from the licence revenue?
e.g. - what proportion of the funding to fight river pollution comes from each source?

Part of the problem is the lack of transparency in the figures affecting the EA - what funds are received into the EA through successful prosecutions of polluters? What funds are received from the Water companies for Lets, Permits and Penalties? How much of the river management budget is funded by each source as well as 'sales' of water across catchment / national boundaries - often to the detriment of anglers due to variation in water levels?

Interesting topic though - be interesting to see what responses you get - apart from the obvious one from theCrow

greenie62 said:

Sorry Benny - could you please define the scope of the question - how would you distinguish between EA Statuatory obligations funded from general taxation and those that are funded from the licence revenue?
e.g. - what proportion of the funding to fight river pollution comes from each source?

Part of the problem is the lack of transparency in the figures affecting the EA - what funds are received into the EA through successful prosecutions of polluters? What funds are received from the Water companies for Lets, Permits and Penalties? How much of the river management budget is funded by each source as well as 'sales' of water across catchment / national boundaries - often to the detriment of anglers due to variation in water levels?

Interesting topic though - be interesting to see what responses you get - apart from the obvious one from theCrow

Click to expand...

And that would be?

thecrow said:

And that would be?

Click to expand...

From another post earlier today:

That is a day that will never ever arrive and as such I will never be happy to pay a tax to fish, they don't do the job they are paid for (other than the few left at the sharp end) never have never will, any idea how many polluters are not prosecuted by them?

Click to expand...

If I've misunderstood / misquoted - I'm sure you'll correct me!

greenie62 said:

From another post earlier today:
If I've misunderstood / misquoted - I'm sure you'll correct me!

Click to expand...

My reluctance to pay a tax to fish to an incompetent organisation has nothing to do with whether I think my licence tax money has helped me catch more fish, they seem to be 2 completely separate subjects to me. I believe that was the question at the start of this thread.

Working on the basis that every river in Oxfordshire (excluding tributaries of Thames tributaries) have deteriorated year on year for 17 years and only since they had hit rock bottom have they actually shown a very modest improvement.

When you consider the reputation that many of the rivers once had (Evenlode, Windrush, Cherwell, Thame and Thames), their management has been an absolute disgrace!

As for stillwaters; the only significant work I know of, has been predominantly on commercial waters and as far as I'm concerned the owners should learn to manage their fisheries better or pay the price.
The EA should not bail them out without billing them for any work undertaken, why should license fees and government tax revenue be used.


So in answer Benny's question. No the EA have not helped me catch more!

Difficult question to answer without knowing where/how and on what the money has been spent, such as how much has been spent (wasted) trying to reintroduce Salmon to some rivers, last time I looked coarse/trout anglers far outnumbered Salmon anglers so must have put more into the pot.

The only way I can think to answer this is to imagine there was no EA or, it existed without anglers money. then there would be more pollution cases going unchecked, less up keep of water-ways, improvement of the quality of water-ways and less stocking of fish.
So, I imagine in general I would catch less fish therefore, the license money does help me catch more fish.
So, it begs the question, more license money increases = more fish ! You get what you pay for !
I am wasted-I should work for the EA.

Some good points.

No.


How much of the EA work force are actually on the front line wearing their waders or more to the point have a productive role in keeping the rivers clean or more importantly safe?
More often I'm seeing river cleaning being done by volunteers/locals, who are already the first to have any acknowledgment of pollution scares/large scale fish deaths, so those jobs are already covered, for the best part thankless.
I appreciate the office staff are needed to do all filing jobs regarding EA licensing etc but what percentage of the EA is available on the front line or what percentage of the overall net license fee is thrown in that direction and goes towards fish stocks?

Here's what I know as fact, 1600 EA people have gone over the last 18 months many of which were frontline staff. Govt Cuts! One officer I was talking to recently a team leader in fisheries told me his team (EA Bailiffs) has been cut from 8 staff for a geographical area, to 3 staff. Baring in mind that bailiffs not only check licenses they also do the waders part - netting, fish rescues and such like. A cut of that size realistically means we are not and will not get the service we were getting 4 years ago.
The blame for this doesn't rest with the EA or its officers it rest at the Govt door only for the cuts in its budget across the board. Pollution control and the officers that police it (IPC officers) are paid for from the general pot from Govt Taxation. Those officers have had the same cuts in staff as fisheries have, so there's less of them to police pollution. This Govt of Shitehawks has, like it or not, given a polluter charter to those minded to pollute and there's many of them that's for sure!

Do they aid my fishing yes they do, given the now restricted staffing levels they have when they can and can muster the manning resource levels, which clearly has got harder as staff have been made redundant.
By all means vent your spleen but direct it at the real people who have made the cuts in the budgets and diminished the service still further from its poor base to start with.

To be fair, the previous government made even larger cuts in 2009, around 16% to see the EA go from a total staff of 13,400 to 11,400.

The EA's Chief Executive actually stated back in February:

"Regulated businesses, such as waste sites and industrial plants, should be unaffected because work related to them is paid for by permitting charges. There should be no drop in inspection work or audits, nor moves to further risk-based regulation and self-reporting of pollution incidents,"

On the positive side the EA will still have a budget of just over £1 billion and will in 2014/2015 close one regional office making significant savings as much of that work can be accomplished (without duplication of staff) from their national office.

wes79 said:

Some good points.

No.


How much of the EA work force are actually on the front line wearing their waders or more to the point have a productive role in keeping the rivers clean or more importantly safe?
More often I'm seeing river cleaning being done by volunteers/locals, who are already the first to have any acknowledgment of pollution scares/large scale fish deaths, so those jobs are already covered, for the best part thankless.
I appreciate the office staff are needed to do all filing jobs regarding EA licensing etc but what percentage of the EA is available on the front line or what percentage of the overall net license fee is thrown in that direction and goes towards fish stocks?

Click to expand...

I can only say from my own experience, on the couple of occasions I have reported a possible pollution incident the EA were there the same evening checking. Whenever I have seen pollution reported on the TV the EA are down there in the water with aerators etc. And I have seen them on TV in the water moving and saving fish when water levels have become so low the fish are in danger in some waters when there has been a drought. . I don't know how often they fail to do this, obviously there are instances where they don't but, as far as I have seen so far they are doing their job. My license fee must go some way to help to pay for this which results in more fish for me to catch.

markg said:

I can only say from my own experience, on the couple of occasions I have reported a possible pollution incident the EA were there the same evening checking. Whenever I have seen pollution reported on the TV the EA are down there in the water with aerators etc. And I have seen them on TV in the water moving and saving fish when water levels have become so low the fish are in danger in some waters when there has been a drought. . I don't know how often they fail to do this, obviously there are instances where they don't but, as far as I have seen so far they are doing their job. My license fee must go some way to help to pay for this which results in more fish for me to catch.

Click to expand...

This often Mark.•

Just 134 immediate fish kill assessments completed by fisheries teams in 6 years out of 839 incidents killing fish: that’s just 16% of incidents being followed up with a proper assessment of dead wildlife once pollution occurs;

With all the government cuts this is liable to get worse.

The bad one said:

By all means vent your spleen but direct it at the real people who have made the cuts in the budgets and diminished the service still further from its poor base to start with.

Click to expand...

No spleen venting required. My points stand and opinions have been formed regardless of any cuts or any hint of political persuasion. Whether you feel that the EA has helped your angling simply depends on where you happen to live and fish. If anglers happen to frequent a river that the EA regularly stock or do improvement works on, I'd expect them to acknowledge that the EA help them catch more fish. If anglers happen to fish a river that rarely, if ever, sees stockings or habitat improvements, they aren't too likely to believe that the EA has helped them catch any fish. I could be very wrong, but I'm not remotely convinced that the EA have improved my angling in the entirety of its existence. Which political parties have been in power, how big their budgets have been and how many staff they've employed is utterly immaterial.

As for the EA having real issues with enforcement, there seems to be a rather obvious solution to me. Just how many people are actually involved with the enforcement and administration of the rod licence? How much of the licence money actually gets through to the fisheries departments? Do away with licensing and you can do away with enforcement and administration costs at a stroke.

We still seem to be getting stuck on this question from the OP which was:

I mean just your license money not the EA generally.

Click to expand...

I tried to distinguish between the 2 'faces' of the question:
but we seem to have got stuck on the question of what the EA do/don't do overall - without concentrating on the licence money and its use.

The only analogy that I can think of is Sea Angling - where the budget is not supplemented with a Licence Fee - how much better would their fishing be if they paid a Licence Fee for - what?

A proposal was bandied around a few years ago that the ATr should take-over the Licensing of Freshwater angling - what would that do to improve your fishing / help you catch more fish?

I have no idea of whether the licence tax money has helped me catch more fish, I am unaware of any work undertaken on the rivers I fish that was within a reasonable enough distance of where I fish to have had any effect.

So the answer for me would be no.

I can think of times years ago when the NRA and then the EA may have prevented me from catching fish but I have no idea if the work carried out was financed by licence tax money.

As least one of my local rivers, the Hampshire Avon, had for many years up until 2009 suffered drastically from the annual EA Weed Cutting programme that wrought havoc to many of the fisheries on the lower stretches between Salisbury and Christchurch.

That the river levels have on average risen since that times is obvious as is the amount of invertebrate life that now thrives.

The higher levels also put water back into some of the feeder ditches and streams that made for a safe haven for juvenile fish as well as increasing spawning sites.

So, at least for my river the opposite is in fact true, the lack of EA activity has been a godsend

This article sums it up far better than I ever could:

Weed

thecrow said:

This often Mark.•

Just 134 immediate fish kill assessments completed by fisheries teams in 6 years out of 839 incidents killing fish: that’s just 16% of incidents being followed up with a proper assessment of dead wildlife once pollution occurs;

With all the government cuts this is liable to get worse.

Click to expand...

How do we all help make it better than 16% then ?

The bad one said:

Here's what I know as fact, 1600 EA people have gone over the last 18 months many of which were frontline staff. Govt Cuts! One officer I was talking to recently a team leader in fisheries told me his team (EA Bailiffs) has been cut from 8 staff for a geographical area, to 3 staff. Baring in mind that bailiffs not only check licenses they also do the waders part - netting, fish rescues and such like. A cut of that size realistically means we are not and will not get the service we were getting 4 years ago.
The blame for this doesn't rest with the EA or its officers it rest at the Govt door only for the cuts in its budget across the board. Pollution control and the officers that police it (IPC officers) are paid for from the general pot from Govt Taxation. Those officers have had the same cuts in staff as fisheries have, so there's less of them to police pollution. This Govt of Shitehawks has, like it or not, given a polluter charter to those minded to pollute and there's many of them that's for sure!

Do they aid my fishing yes they do, given the now restricted staffing levels they have when they can and can muster the manning resource levels, which clearly has got harder as staff have been made redundant.
By all means vent your spleen but direct it at the real people who have made the cuts in the budgets and diminished the service still further from its poor base to start with.

Click to expand...

There may have been approaching 1600 job losses but don't the EA contract out more work than they used to?

You mention pollution; do the EA get given all the relevant data from sewage treatment works, so why don't they use it?
The utility companies apply for discharge licenses, if they discharge levels of toxins above what is licensed, they get charged a predetermined penalty fee, if they then exceed the 'fixed penalty' levels - criminal proceedings should ensue!

"This Govt of Shitehawks" - I'll avoid turning this into a political debate but just say the agency was formed by a Tory government, then they were run by a Labour government for 13yrs before returning to the Tories.
So in my locality we went from having good river fisheries in 1996 to having ****ing **** ones in 2012 and in 2013 they went up to just being ****.... WOW!

"given a polluter charter to those minded to pollute"
I'd say looking at some of the fines handed out recently, you're wrong.