Wayne Pritchett on Rivers and Harbours

As regards to all the cargo dues you see. I mean all those cargo companies have what we call a Manifest Book and once a month I used to go down all these places and collect the Manifest Book you see, and then I’d have to sit down and there was a scale of charges, so much a tonne for cement, so much for this, so much for that, and you’d work out how much the bill was and all I would do is raise that bill. 

I wouldn’t send it to the customer direct, it would go through the Council Offices where they’d send the bills out so if people failed to pay them, the Recoveries Department of the Council could follow it up. I couldn’t do that. If I sent somebody a bill for £200 or something and they said, “No sorry, we’re not paying you” I mean what do I do?

In the Council they’ve got a Legal Department and a Recoveries Department, they can put more pressure on and they’ve got the time to do so.

So, that’s how it was but all these fees and charges were reviewed annually. They never necessarily went up, certainly the Cargo Dues never went up for years and of course then you had so many different ones. You had ones on the goods and then you had ones on the ship.