As a narrowboater, I'm a member of several waterways community groups with an active interest in preserving and using the Inland Waterways system as a local asset for the waterside community, a green Environment for wildlife, a place for leisure, tourism and small business, and a low carbon form of transportation. With more that 3000 miles of inland waterways and towpaths in constant use by walkers, cyclists and boaters, these routes require constant supervision to ensure that they are usable and viable. Waterways are partly funded by the Government but the buget is very tight and we need practical community involvement to keep things going. I'd like to harness the waterways community as the eyes and ears of the waterways, so we can log problems of maintenance, poor heritage preservation and environmental pollution on the waterways, a bit like a FixMyStreet for the waterways. The idea is that people can use a mobile phone to send an SMS message to say there is a problem, and this is automatically passed to the right authority for resolution. (Most parts of the waterways, being in very rural areas, have only limited connectivity, hence the use of SMS.) The reported problem would stay 'on the map' until it is fixed. Can you suggest how we could get funding for a project like this? We think that some of the large waterways groups and the responsible bodies might provide some funding, but think that we would also need to find someone to help us match the funding. Once set up, we might be able to get funding to sustain the service from the responsible bodies and from the community Can you suggest any funding bodies we could approach?

what criteria do the LSC use to make decisions on funding to deliver training. We are a VCS organisation