‘These changes are part of a drive to increase efficiencies across the whole of British Waterways’ activities and as a result I have agreed with James that he will step down as commercial director,’ said BW chief executive Robin Evans.

Evans went on to praise Froomberg’s tremendous impact on BW’s commercial growth over the last five years. ‘He has been instrumental in the development of the joint ventures that are now so important to us and he has driven significant changes and improvements in all our property and commercial activities,’ said Evans. ‘I have thoroughly enjoyed working with him, learnt a great deal from him and wish him well in his future endeavours.’

Stuart Mills, currently head of property, has been appointed director of property and will take the lead role in BW’s property activity, including its joint ventures such as Wood Wharf, Isis Waterside Regeneration and Gloucester Quays.

Vince Moran, customer operations director, will be the lead director for BW’s interests in the Waterside Pub Partnership and will be responsible for developing BW’s involvement in the utilities business (such as water sales and telecoms) which now generates around £17m per year for the waterways.

Philip Ridal, finance director, has been appointed chairman of BW’s wholly-owned marina subsidiary, British Waterways Marinas Ltd. This is a step that re-emphasises the lack of transparency at BW, something the industry has worried about ever since BWML was originally set up in 2000 as an ‘independent company’.

It was pointed out many times to BW by the industry and Boating Business that BWML could hardly be independent when it shared a director with BW – and had possibly differing business objectives to BW.

Froomberg’s seat on both boards led to concerns that BW was flouting UK competition law and the appointment of BW finance director Ridal as chairman of BWML sees these concerns resurface, along with the potential for Ridal to face conflicts of interests in his board level jobs for two different companies.