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Rod Licence

P

Peter Bowles

Senior Member
What do we actually get from the purchase of a Environment Agency rod license? I know you will get a criminal record if caught with out one and I know the Environment Agency paid 12 million in bonuses to it bosses a couple of year ago. Has anyone any good news on where or what the money generated from the rod license goes.

Cheers Peter
 
Seems some of mine has gone towards the removal of bank side cover on my local small river. The EA rocked up yesterday and proceeded to rip out the far bank trees from the best swims. It’ll be bare banks and nowhere to hide for this fish now. 😢
 
Graham Elliott said:
I wonder if the EA inform the AT of proposed work?
Maybe they should? At least it might then be communicated to local clubs so they could raise objections
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No they don't tell anyone. In most instances it is hard to ever find out who did what and why. If it was or was not the EA unfortunately they are not interested. It is extremely frustrating, the EA will bang on about small streams and how they have improved the habitat along a couple of hundred metres whilst completely ignoring wholesale destruction of miles of other waterway and the problems the riparian habitat destruction causes
 
Andrew Burt said:
No they don't tell anyone. In most instances it is hard to ever find out who did what and why. If it was or was not the EA unfortunately they are not interested. It is extremely frustrating, the EA will bang on about small streams and how they have improved the habitat along a couple of hundred metres whilst completely ignoring wholesale destruction of miles of other waterway and the problems the riparian habitat destruction causes
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Yes Andy, When I wanted to renew an agreed herbicide licence to clear bankside weeds from a L Severn stretch, under exactly the same procedures and watersafe product as permitted by them the year before, they insisted that I complete the full number of documents again

Yes seems wholesale destruction of habitat can just be carried out without approval or notification.
 
This is a link to the Environment agency January 2022 fishing licence newsletter, it tells you what they do with the money. I think I checked a box to sign up when I got my licence.

We have just published our Annual Fisheries Report for 2020/21, which details how we have spent licence fee money to improve our fisheries. Between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021 we generated £24,583,342 in income from licence sales – all of which has been reinvested into angling, incident response, enforcement action, and fisheries habitat improvements.
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It is my understanding that a significant chunk of the licence fee money is passed on by the EA to the Angling Trust for use in promoting angling and fisheries. That is the reason why many anglers either left or refuse to join AT, as they regard it as being in the pocket of the EA, although that is far from the truth.


Dave
 
Reading the Annual Fisheries Report and it looks more like the usual political spin, Rivers are on their knees up and down the country from pollution, predators, bank destruction and most probably a whole host of other things. The people who are taking the brunt of the revenue from rod licences are saying its all fine and dandy. The only good thing looks like the fish farms, but the pollutants should fund the fish kill restocking.
 
Hadn't looked at it until just now, 134,610 barbel stocked into rivers and stillwaters in 2020 - 2021 (1-2 year old fish). Would be great to know how many in rivers and which rivers.
 
Peter Bowles said:
What do we actually get from the purchase of a Environment Agency rod license? I know you will get a criminal record if caught with out one and I know the Environment Agency paid 12 million in bonuses to it bosses a couple of year ago. Has anyone any good news on where or what the money generated from the rod license goes.

Cheers Peter
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The license money doesn’t go into anything per se, it’s a generic tax like road tax and like all tax money it pays off government debt. They may equate their budget with license fee sales figures but the EA budget comes straight from government like all public service budgets.

The biggest learner people could do with understanding is that your taxes don’t pay for anything. Get your head around this.

Our government can create money (without inflation) and any budget constraints or spending cuts are self-imposed or ideological. Like they can find 200+ billion for Royal Yachts and HS2 but cant find 2 odd billion for the 20 quid on universal credit. Its ideological/nasty/lacking in basic humanity.

So regardless of how much license money they rake in, the amount of budget the EA gets will depend on the ideology of the government at the time.

ATB
 
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