Glasbury-Hay update

SWOAPG has now managed to speak with Powys County Council about the ban on canoe launching at Glasbury. The situation is that the Council finds itself legally obliged to carry out an environmental assessment before it can once again permit launching (both ‘recreational’ and ‘commercial’) at the Bont. This is likely to take months and there doesn’t seem to be any way round it. There may, however, be things that Providers can do to help achieve a positive result from the assessment process – one of which, unfortunately, is for paddlers to comply with the ‘ban’ in the meantime. This is because the Council needs to be able to demonstrate that paddlers would comply with any conditions that it might need to impose for environmental protection; and any form of ‘protest paddling’ in the meantime could seriously undermine that ability and result in more draconian restrictions being applied than might otherwise be necessary.

We’re very sorry not to have any more positive news at the moment. This is of course extremely frustrating for everyone involved, but we are working behind-the-scenes in the hope of at least bringing you a bit more information in the next week or two…

2 thoughts on “Glasbury-Hay update”

  1. Writing as Chair of Glasbury and District Community Council – where the Bont sits. One problem is that there are paddlers who do not know the problem (or ignore it) This means that it is most likely to be compliant local (to Glasbury) companies that are most impacted – which seems unfair but I can see it would not help if they breach it. However, all sorts use the Bont, to launch, beyond those companies. Police, Armed forces, individuals, companies from outside Powys…..If they have travelled, particularly as a group and do not know the area (and/or have the mentality that ‘just one breaching it, won’t harm’ ) the disincentive to comply is huge, unless NRW/ Powys actively Police the rule. I’ll raise at our meeting tonight whether we can do more to assist in resolving all this. Maybe Powys publicising the ‘people breaching it could ruin the future use for all of us’ would deter some marginal use. AND we have had no good weather yet!

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