Rod Licence Sales

The rod licence is the main source of income that funds our fisheries work - £24 million of the £34 million is from this source. Licence income does not fund other areas of our work, such as water quality, but is spent entirely on fisheries specific work.

We currently spend:

• £10 million on our salmon work
• £24 million on our coarse and trout work.

Our salmon work is mainly funded through government grants, which is focused on the conservation of fish stocks. The £1 million we receive from salmon anglers is used to supplement these grants.

Our coarse and trout work is almost entirely funded from rod licence income. The main work areas are:

• regulation (rod licence sales, enforcement and disease control)
• fisheries monitoring
• promotion and advice
• fish rescues
• stocking and improvements (such as habitat improvements, fish passes, fisheries development and improvement).

Rod licence sales fluctuate from year to year, and may be affected by all sorts of external influences such as the weather, Foot and Mouth Disease and major world sporting events.

The following figures are the totalled rod licence sales and value in England and Wales for the years 2000/01 to 2010/11: 

 

Year	Sales	Income
2000/01	1,085,446	£14,419,060
2001/02	1,143,430	£14,868,720
2002/03	1,180,061	£16,009,823
2003/04	1,261,972	£18,004,606
2004/05	1,218,218	£18,593,000
2005/06	1,296,865	£20,292,629
2006/07	1,268,313	£20,264,136
2007/08	1,352,423	£21,662,806
2008/09	1,292,933	£22,326,368
2009/10	1,469,994	£25,409,157
2010/11	1,431,981	£25,397,472

In the financial year of 2009-2010, we spent £2.5 million on improvement projects. As we work with partners on most of these, the total spent on fisheries improvements is around £10 million.

As rod licence income is important, we protect this by checking that anglers are not fishing without one. Last year we checked 124,000 anglers, with just 6,000 fishing without one (some of these left them at home and produced them later). 

Over 4,100 anglers were successfully prosecuted by the courts for fishing without a licence, with fines and costs totalling over £650,000. This works out at an average of £160 for every one of the anglers checked who do not hold a valid licence.

We also give advice to angling clubs, and last year we made over 2,000 site visits to give advice and attended 700 angling club meetings. To encourage new anglers, we coached over 25,000 beginners at various events.