Ultimately, the waterways will need more money to survive. That money is not going to come from the money fairy, and a proportion of it is going to come from the pockets of boaters.
As soon as we mention this, the cry goes up to tell us that a large proportion of CC boaters are on low and fixed incomes, and obviously somebody else will have to pay. Suddenly we enter a kind of netherworld where BW/NWC is expected to charge according to what people can afford, not what a service costs to deliver.
That is not sustainable. Boating, whether as a leisure boater or as a home is a choice that we make, and we must expect to pay for that choice. We cannot continually say "well I can't afford what I have chosen, so somebody else will have to pay for me". If you can't afford it, you can't afford it.
The elephant in the room here is the vexed subject of differential charging for CCers. It has become the subject that dare not speak its name, and any suggestion to change the system of charging is seen as a malicious attack on CCers.
There are many complex factors at play here, and with the number of continuous cruisers growing, and 9% of all continuous cruisers being subject to enforcement proceedings for failing to continuously cruise (and there are many others not subject to proceedings whose pattern of cruising is very localised), it is clear that some boaters are registering as CCers for purely economic reasons.
A charging system that reduces the financial differential would probably help to reduce wear and tear on the waterways, as some fake-CCers would take up moorings and no longer cause wear and tear on the system.
The argument advanced against such a charge is that CCers would get nothing for their fee, but moorers pay for something. To counter that, I ask what does a moorer get for an EOG fee for a farmers field to BW? They get absolutely nothing, not even a right to moor in the place. For mooring and services, they must pay the landowner. Basically, the EOG fee, mooring agreement fee from a provider etc. are, for most boaters, just an extra bit of licence fee.
It is also easy to dismiss the cost of facilities. Sanitary stations and rubbish disposal are NOT zero cost to BW, and are not fixed costs (more use=bigger bill), and a CCer makes greater use of these facilities. Some form of charge is, I believe, appropriate. The question is "how much".
I am going to suggest, as a starting point, that a fee of £5/ft/year to cover greater use of facilities would be appropriate
ETA a pertinent quote which demonstrates that services are not fixed cost;
Clearly an additional emptying of the septic tank, earlier than scheduled will have a cost. The majority of my emptying occurs at my home mooring into a main drain. Is it fair that I pay as much as a CCer for those costs?