BCU Access Policy, what do you think?

[robp]

Survey now live at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/bcu-river-access

If you have an opinion please complete for yourself and promote in appropriate places as you see fit.

[Pam Bell]

Completed.

[robp]

Thanks for the completing this.

I just took a quick peek at the responses so far and unsurprisingly 95% of folks who've completed the survey disagree in principle with the BCU negotiating restrictive agreements.

More surprisingly over 65% of the responses have been BCU members and of the 35% who weren't, nearly two thirds would consider (re-)joining. So far 90% of responders would support calling an EGM or presenting one of the various motions at the AGM.

Keep them coming.

[Keith Day]

Completed.

[Big Henry]

I have problems with questions 14-16 (What measures would you personally be prepared to take to help re-focus the BCU.) As I am not a member of the BCU, I can't realistically support a call for an EGM or lend support for formal motions, etc.

Completed.

Would it be a good idea to compile a list of ALL BCU/CE registered clubs and send all of them a link to this? It could also be used to gain more proxy votes if you do go call for an EGM. May have to collect the clubs info area by area, in case the BCU start getting suspicious and claiming they can't give them all to one person, just because they may do this!

Maybe you could send the link to the committee members of the BCU to ask them if they would fill out the survey?

[robp]

I have problems with questions 14-16 (What measures would you personally be prepared to take to help re-focus the BCU.) As I am not a member of the BCU, I can't realistically support a call for an EGM or lend support for formal motions, etc.

You should only get asked those questions if you either said that you were a BCU member or were not a BCU member but answered Yes to "Would you consider (re-)joining the BCU as part of a campaign..." at the bottom of the why you aren't a member page.

Completed.

Would it be a good idea to compile a list of ALL BCU/CE registered clubs and send all of them a link to this? It could also be used to gain more proxy votes if you do go call for an EGM. May have to collect the clubs info area by area, in case the BCU start getting suspicious and claiming they can't give them all to one person, just because they may do this!

Maybe you could send the link to the committee members of the BCU to ask them if they would fill out the survey?

Sounds like a plan.

Start by circulating to clubs that we know of that have active online forums. Obviously the medium lends itself to a clickthrough online so a better response rate will be achieved from online posting and it just takes one person at each club to stick it on a website or forum post. If anyone here wants to do that for clubs they know of then please do that, The link is:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/bcu-river-access
Description from the first page is:

The object of this survey is to sample paddle sport participants attitudes about river access in the UK. It also sets out to measure how effective paddlers think the BCU is at promoting access and what steps both current members and non-members would be prepared to take to improve matters.

I did consider sending the link to CE/BCU and asking if they wouldn't mind including it in their member e-mail shots or April CF (probably too late), but figured that (a) I have no idea who to contact (b) steam would come out of their ears.

[Pete K]

Done for you.

[Big Henry]

I have problems with questions 14-16 (What measures would you personally be prepared to take to help re-focus the BCU.) As I am not a member of the BCU, I can't realistically support a call for an EGM or lend support for formal motions, etc.

You should only get asked those questions if you either said that you were a BCU member or were not a BCU member but answered Yes to "Would you consider (re-)joining the BCU as part of a campaign..." at the bottom of the why you aren't a member page.

I understood that to mean that I would only consider re-joining once the changes had been successfully made, so would not be able to formally support motions, etc, until that time.

Good set of questions, and good effort in general; I would think the BCU/CE would have to take the results seriously. I await the results being published.

[robp]

The survey is going well, we now have 360 individual responses and the vast majority (83%) disagree with Canoe England's changing access stance. The majority are also either existing BCU members (68%) or aren't but would consider re-joining (20%) and of those two groups 83% would be prepared to lend their support to an EGM and 85% to one or more motions at next years AGM.

We now have 100s of people who would be prepared to get involved and improve the Canoe England/BCU situation for the next generation, but need a lot more to stand a chance of actually making this happen. I set myself a target of getting a minimum of 1000 positive responses to take this forwards with 2000 as a solid mandate. We are over a third of the way to my minimum number, but that is a heck of a lot more responses to go.

If you haven't given your opinion yet, please do so:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/bcu-river-access

If you haven't circulated the URL to your club and your paddling mates, please do so. There are a few identifiable clusters in the results where there will be burst of 20-30 responses from the same geographical area within a few hours. I'm sure that this is where somebody has circulated the URL on a local forum or mailing list. Please do this now if you haven't already as this really clocks up the participation.

[chriscw]

The BCU's access stance eh, I was not aware that sitting on the fence was a stance...

[morsey]

The survey will not accept my choice of "other" for question three, it is forcing me to select a choice and I do not agree with any of them!

[morsey]

The BCU's access stance eh, I was not aware that sitting on the fence was a stance...

Are you sure they are sitting on the fence Chris? BCU/CE are agreeing with and promoting the expressed views of the fisheries, it appears that they are standing on the other side of the fence from recreational paddlers.

[Mark R]

Done, nice work.

[Strad]

When do we get to see the results?

[robp]

The survey will not accept my choice of "other" for question three, it is forcing me to select a choice and I do not agree with any of them!

Assuming your choice isn't "No, never" which is pretty clear, then either of the other choices takes you to a set of questions about what you would consider acceptable in an access agreement. There is an "Other" option in that list.

What would you like to say that isn't covered by "Yes", or "No", or "Yes but" (no but, but yeah, but no). Seriously though, I'm not a professional survey designer so there are probably a number of schoolboy errors in the survey, I hope that they don't detract too much from it's purpose of documenting the strength of feeling on this issue!

[robp]

When do we get to see the results?

My current plan is to close the survey and publish the full detailed results and write-up when there are either at least 2000 valid individual responses or on the 1st May, whichever is soonest.

I intend to publish regular updates on the number of responses and a headline overview similar to the one a few messages back in this thread until someone gets fed-up with me and tells me to shut up. OK?

[Strad]

When do we get to see the results?

My current plan is to close the survey and publish the full detailed results and write-up when there are either at least 2000 valid individual responses or on the 1st May, whichever is soonest.

I intend to publish regular updates on the number of responses and a headline overview similar to the one a few messages back in this thread until someone gets fed-up with me and tells me to shut up. OK?

Sounds good :-)

[Big Henry]

It'll make a nice change to actually see the results of a paddling survey! In fact I think more info has been forthcoming from this survey so far than from all the others I've filled in for students for their degree. And I think it is better written and thought out than nearly all the others. Well done so far, and I for one look forward to the final results.

[morsey]

Assuming your choice isn't "No, never" which is pretty clear, then either of the other choices takes you to a set of questions about what you would consider acceptable in an access agreement. There is an "Other" option in that list.

I think you may have missed the point. You give four choices for the question and to proceed you must tick one of the boxes. The "other" option is not accepted as a choice in its own right. The four options do not fit my position and so I can't proceed!

[robp]

I think you may have missed the point. You give four choices for the question and to proceed you must tick one of the boxes. The "other" option is not accepted as a choice in its own right. The four options do not fit my position and so I can't proceed!

Sorry, I misunderstood the question number completely. You are right, this is a bug in the design of that question, Ooops. I can't change it now it is live and the 480 folks that have responded so far wouldn't thank me for starting again!

The live tweak that I have been able to do is make the whole of Q4 optional so you don't need to answer it to proceed. I think that you should now be able to leave this question blank and/or fill in Other without ticking any other boxes and still get to the following questions.

[morsey]

There is a question missing from the end:

Would you join an alternative organisation that campaigns access as a priority and communicates with its members?

[Transplant]

There is a question missing from the end:

Would you join an alternative organisation that campaigns access as a priority and communicates with its members?

The real follow up question is why haven't we already started working towards this, I for one would happily get involved in this.

I for one firmly believe we have wasted enough time and effort waiting for the BCU to do something positive on behalf of it's members. Perhaps it's time for a little less conversation and a little more action? :)

[Mark R]

Anyone not completed this excellent survey yet?

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/bcu-river-access

[morsey]

How many hits has this survey had so far Robp?

[robp]

I'd like to say thanks to the 570 people who have given their opinions so far using this survey.

From a quick peek at the results so far, 78% "Disagree" (22%) or "Strongly Disagree" (56%) with CE/BCU ever negotiating non-365day+environmental access agreements.

A very large proportion, 94% rate the current BCU/CE access policy as somewhere between "non-existant" and "not very effective" with similar percentages for effectiveness of communication!

65% of those who have responded are current BCU members, and 75% of those who aren't would consider re-joining if they felt they could then have some influence on the access policy.

Of the above two groups (current members and those prepared to re-join), 85% would be prepared to support a call for an EGM and 82% would be prepared to either give a written proxy or physically attend next year's AGM to support at least one of a variety of straw-man motions on access and democratic reform of the BCU.

Now 570 responses is a brilliant level for a survey that I put together in half an hour in my lunch break, but I still think that we need at least a 1000 responses as a significant indicator and 2000 as a solid platform to actually get something done. We are well over half way to the 1000 and 2000 looks perfectly achievable.

If you haven't given your opinion yet, please do so:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/bcu-river-access

If you haven't circulated the URL to your club and your paddling mates, please do so. Every time someone circulates the URL on another mailing list or forum we see a spike of at least 10-30 responses which really helps!

[Jimski89]

Completed

[James Hartley]

Done, and nice survey, hope the BCU sit's up and finally takes note

[peakfreak]

Only just seen this survey.
Done and link reposted elsewhere.

A very good survey IMHO, very common sense approach with the questions

[Jon_Brown]

Great survey and something we can finally hit the BCU/CE with.

Another survey, this time from the BCU/CE, is for the Coach Update Consultation - now before you all groan and moan, it is another opportunity to get the message across (perhaps if 'respected?' coaches are unhappy with access it's not just a small vocal minority of riff raff paddlers.....)-

Q24 The current coach update scheme has 5 requirements. Please rate the importance.. - 1)BCU home membership - Very Important to not at all important - hmm difficult one.

Q26 Which of the current features do you feel should be retained in the future developments to the coach update scheme?
Membership
Firat Aid
Child Protection
CRB
CPD
I reinforced the non-selected/ticked Membership choice with a comment about how CE has had a negative affect on Access by taking part in restrictive access agreements and that Coaching should break away from CE...

[Jim_MWX]

Completed.

A well thought out set of questions.