Help Angling Fund a National Body - What you can do

SAA members and many anglers have always wanted a single, properly funded, angling body.

SAA has been an active participant in the struggle for unity with NAA, the Unity Working Group and now FACT. All these bodies had one problem, lack of money to achieve anything.

Angling is the last great escapist sport and many anglers are not members of any organisation. This makes it very hard to reach them and their pockets, so funds could always be in short supply.

However the Environment Agency sells most anglers a rod licence each year and a small optional additional sum on the licence fee could supply much needed funds for a centralised, unified, angling body.

Anglers raise in excess of £18.6 million a year for the EA, yet most angling organisations struggle to get by on less than £50,000 a year, from their members.

A properly funded angling body could employ professionals to run public awareness and promotion campaigns to persuade parents that letting their children fish would be better than letting them roam the streets, that angling is a good thing and that anglers really do care for the environment.

The Government recognises this fact, but cannot, or will not, come up with the seed corn finance needed by angling to start down that road or make a commitment to a levy without the support of the Environment Agency.

The Environment Agency acknowledges that angling needs the money but is reticent to assist by supporting the concept of a levy on the licence, for many reasons. Most of which SAA disagrees with.

If FACT had just a 5% levy on the existing coarse rod licence (£1.20 on the cost of your licence) that could produce about £930,000 a year which would be invested in developing new anglers and bringing older anglers back into the sport, monitoring legislation for negative impacts on angling, representing the needs and aspirations of English anglers in Europe and creating a professional image for the sport to encourage commercial sponsorship of our incredibly successful national teams. If and when a sea rod licence is introduced then the same arrangements could apply. In the meantime SAA believes that all anglers should stand together in the interest of the sport as a whole.

You could help is achieve this end by writing to Dafydd Evans, Head of Fisheries, The Environment Agency, Rio House, Waterside Drive, Aztec West, Almondsbury, Bristol BS12 4UD and asking him to support a licence levy, payable to FACT, to promote and develop angling.