General Information
The River Thames Boat Project is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee that is registered with the Charity Commission.
The charity’s mission is to give people opportunities of experiencing river and waterways’ environments to the benefit of their personal, social and educational development. We focus especially on children, young people, older people and those with disabilities from London and the South East.
Patrons:
Baroness Jane Campbell of Surbiton DBE
Anne Usher (nee Dickins) MBE
David Suchet CBE
Honorary President: Sir Peter Harrop KCB
The Trustees and Directors of the Company are:
Paul Barry
David Bell
Jon Chapman
Bob Darke
Luke Gannon
Keith Knox (Vice Chair)
Peter Low
Jane Newman
Richard Robinson (retired November 2017 but co-opted until March 2018)
Louise Sibley (Chair)
Byron Turner
Stephen West
Company Secretary: Linda Varney
Principal Activities
The River Thames Boat Project provides educational, therapeutic and recreational cruises and activities on the Thames, utilising our community boat, Thames Venturer, which is crewed by volunteers working with qualified skippers. We run therapeutic day and residential cruises designed to provide a beneficial experience for people with physical or learning disabilities, and for older people. Thames Venturer was joined during the course of this cruise season by our second accessible and custom built boat, Thames Discoverer, which will be used primarily for day cruising.
We offer a range of educational programmes and activities, mainly (but not exclusively) for younger people. These include School on the River and Eco Venturers’ days which are for primary school aged children and early evening shorter sessions for youth groups. Our educational activities are professionally led and supported by volunteer teachers.
Further information about how we deliver our charitable purpose and what we do is available on our website, http://www.thamesboatproject.org.
Community presence and fundraising
As part of building community links, and for fundraising purposes, we take our boat to local river-based events and hold open days each year, when members of the public are encouraged to come on board, take a tour and learn about our work.
We also use our boat, when not on core client or community events, to earn additional income to support the work that we do. We ensure that these events are in line with our charitable purpose. We offer the boat for Summer evening cruises, for experiential learning opportunities, for community hospitality events or meetings, to Friends of the River Thames Boat Project (an organisation run by volunteers to bring financial support to the charity) and to volunteers for their own gatherings and fund-earning events.
Details of events, training days and income-raising cruises in 2017-18 are provided in our Statement of Public Benefit.
Staff and volunteers:
Our activities are managed and delivered by a team of five staff each with specialised talents and skills in their area of responsibility. In 2017-18 these were:
Pippa Butterfield (part-time), responsible for client bookings, office management and finance
Sonja Freebody (part-time, left October 2017), client and event marketing activities, external communication and general fundraising
Zaria Greenhill (part-time), co-ordinator of our education and learning activities
Miranda Jaggers (full-time), project managing the build of the charity’s second boat and also responsible for grant funding and community liaison.
Peter Oldham (full-time), responsible for leading all boat and crew operations, training and maintenance and, as skipper of Thames Venturer, is the primary interface with our client groups on board.
The charity benefits from the support of many volunteers, who act as boat crew and teachers, as well as event and fundraising supporters and office helpers. A full list of our volunteers is given on page 15.
Equality, training and people development
The directors pursue a policy of equal treatment towards people with physical or mental disabilities. People with disabilities are an important part of our clientele. Thames Venturer was converted to make it possible for wheelchair users to have access to all passenger facilities on board, including the toilets and shower facilities. Our new boat Thames Discoverer, delivered in February 2018, has been specially designed as an accessible boat with all the needs of our client groups in mind.
We apply a policy of equal treatment for all staff and volunteers, who need to be able to perform the duties required of them in a safe, timely and effective manner, recognising that our clients’ health, safety and welfare remains paramount.
This means we devote a significant number of days a year to developing staff and volunteers’ skills. Crew training covers boat operations, health and safety, emergency drills, and disability awareness; in addition, we run teacher training days for those working on our environmental education programmes and activities.
Risk
The directors conduct a periodic assessment of the risks to which the company is exposed, including business risk and operational risk because of the nature of our work on the water. The likelihood and relative seriousness of the identified risks were reviewed during the last year and several minor modifications made. It is the company’s policy to keep its risk assessments up-to-date and to adopt measures to mitigate or minimise identified risks to the greatest extent practicable.
River Thames Boat Project 