Spesh

I have the dubious pleasure of drafting contracts for a living, so should be able to shed some light on this. Essentially, those who have been raising points about penalties are correct - under English law penalty clauses are not enforceable. It's not the same as "illegality" (although as an aside a contract term requiring an illegal act is indeed not enforceable, so should you hire a hit man who takes the money but doesn't bump off your chosen victim, were you to be stupid enough to sue said hit man for breach of contract you'd both go to prison and fail to win the contract claim), in that you don't commit an offence by including such a term, it's just not treated by the law as being a binding promise. As another example, you can't exclude your liability under a contract for causing death or personal injury, any term attempting to do so would be ignored by a court. As for the specific term, the distinction which is relevant here is between what are known as "liquidated damages" and penalties. Liquidated damages are the parties agreeing upfront the compensation payable by a party if they breach a specific term of the contract. An agreed payment will be liquidated damages (so enforceable) if it is a genuine estimate of the loss suffered by the non-breaching party. If not, it will be a penalty and not enforceable. It's a bit legally (as it's a note from a law firm) but http://www.shoosmiths.co.uk/client-resources/Penalty-clauses-liquidated-damages-Traps-for-unwary-4897.aspx provides some more info. Agreements to pay interest are generally fine, because that's a decent approximation of the loss suffered when payment is delayed. Doubling the amount payable looks pretty questionable to me. I don't see how the marina operator's loss if payment was one day late could be anything like the entire value of the payment. There is also no link between the extra amount payable and how overdue payment is, which is something you'd expect were it to be a genuine estimate of the loss suffered. Absent any specific facts which would justify that charge I'd therefore view it as a penalty which wouldn't be enforceable.

An element of Bijou Line still exists, in that Bijou Line was owned by (or something like that) the same people as have Brookline at Dunhampstead near Worcester. I had a couple of family holidays from Bijou in the late 80s/early 90s (not entirely sure which, but think boats were "Mercury" and "Emerald", at least one of which had a GRP roof which came as a bit of a surprise the first time one of us jumped onto it!) and hired from Brookline a few years back. When picking up the boat at Brookline we spotted they had a note pad with the Bijou Line logo on it so asked what happened to Bijou, as far as I can recall (and my memory is a bit vague on this) they said something along the lines of the rent being vastly increased so they could no longer afford the base, presumably the landlord wanted them off so houses could be put up as you have seen.

This is just a semantics point on what is meant by "market" though. The market, i.e. people being able to get money by suing people is/was created by judges developing the law in that direction. The advertising allows that market to be exploited by spreading the word. I also never said that advertising has had no effect, in fact I said the complete opposite if you read what I wrote. It's plainly had a huge impact but I don't think it's the logical place to poke the finger of blame because it's not the underlying cause. If the judiciary had been a bit more sensible there wouldn't be anything to advertise about.

The advice was from external solicitors, good ones, to us as the in-house legal team, and it was that the claimant had a reasonable case. I mentioned it just to point out that the "it wasn't a proper path" argument isn't necessarily as helpful as it might seem it should be. I totally agree though that the inclination is always to settle small claims even if you have a high likelihood of winning, and that no doubt encourages spurious litigants and their ambulance chasing assistants. Much though I hate the ambulance chasers and the negative impact they have on the view of the profession as a whole, blaming the government for allowing lawyers to advertise doesn't make much sense. If the market didn't exist in the first place there would be no business to advertise for. Yes, the proliferation of "have you had an accident" adverts has no doubt vastly increased awareness of the possibility to make claims and therefore the number of claims, but that's a symptom not the cause. The underlying issue is the shift of the law of negligence in favour of claimants, that is what has created the market which the ambulance chasers exploit. No win no fee is also nothing new, and it's no more than a business model, so there is nothing there for a government to curb. If Government is to act it should be to sensibly legislate on negligence to restore the emphasis on accidents being a fact of life, and people being required to take responsibility for their own actions. Nice theory, but it was government which significantly de-regulated the legal services industry allowing all sorts of people to provide legal services which is a significant competition issue for traditional law firms. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15187154. This was strongly resisted by solicitors but government didn't listen, so that argument doesn't make much sense. Comparatively few solicitors will be benefitting from the claims explosion anyway, the vast majority of those at no win no fee claims factories will be just claims processors and not actually solicitors.

For what it's worth, it's not really anything to do with the government. Claims of this type aren't health and safety, which is mainly to do with the workplace and ensuring employers provide a safe place to work. They are negligence claims, and negligence is pretty much entirely a common law issue which means it's judge made law. The only fault you can attribute to government is not legislating to pull back the way the judiciary have expanded the scope of negligence. Also worth noting that it not being the proper path doesn't necessarily mean there isn't a claim. We were recently advised at work to settle a claim a visitor to one of our sites had brought because he'd taken a short cut through a small hedge in the car park and bumped his head on a metal sign on a lamppost which stated the parking restrictions. That case had been picked up by one of the ambulance chasing scum firms.That sort of thing makes it exceedingly clear that the compensation culture has gone way too far, but if you're looking for a scapegoat blame the judiciary.

Good website, for what it's worth I like that bit about it not being a business as I'd rather put my money towards someone who is small scale and independent. Perhaps worth just adding an FAQ about being around in the event of any problems though, you don't want people thinking you are going to do it for a couple of months and then bugger off to Uni and not be contactable should there be any construction issues need sorting out etc. Not that I'm questioning your workmanship, but for £130 people will probably want assurance that if there are any problems you'll be contactable to sort it out or provide a replacement. Not sure if this was one of the typos which you said had been fixed, but the "not" was still missing from the low bridge FAQ when I just had a look. To be ultra picky, the start of the second sentence of the weatherproof FAQ is also lower case, you never know, that might put a member of the grammar police off making an order!

In simple terms, reorganisations of public bodies happen fairly frequently (think changes of local councils, NHS trusts etc etc), and when it happens responsibility for existing liabilities, acts, statements etc will always transfer to the new body. It couldn't happen any other way because otherwise there is a total lack of accountability for the actions of the previous authority which, if you'd been wronged by it, wouldn't be desperately fair.

For those that are interested in the legal stuff, there is some information about the impact of the "What you are doing is fine" statements made by BW available on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimate_expectation) and in a briefing from a law firm (http://www.pinsentmasons.com/PDF/LegitimateExpectationRevisited0708.pdf) "Legitimate Expectation" is essentially a curb on public authorities saying one thing and then changing their minds. In one case it's been defined as 'Legitimate or reasonable expectation may arise either from an express promise given on behalf of a public authority or the existence of a regular practice which the claimant can reasonably expect to continue'. I think at the very least, as Jenlyn says, CRT could have expected this to have been raised if they had pursued enforcement proceedings against boaters who fall within this group, and I'd have thought that such an argument would have had a decent chance of success. Equally, without knowing for sure that they could use this defence, the relevant boaters still had some uncertainty as to the status of their homes. The roving permit idea therefore makes pefect sense for both those boaters as well as CRT, and is a very sensible solution to the issue.

As a version of point 2, a simple improvement to the current proposal would surely be that the operators of the trip boat are required to make their home mooring available as visitor moorings whenever they are running trips from the existing visitor moorings. It's not ideal because it looks like the trip boat's "home" is shorter than the visitor pontoon so it wouldn't provide as much space, but it's still better than nothing. Otherwise the trip boat mooring sits empty all day whilst passing boats can't stop because 5 minutes every hour the trip boat needs the visitor moorings. It says they are going to be putting signs on the visitor mooring when the trip boat is operating, so just put on that sign that during those times moorings are avilable 200 yards downstream.

Should have said "may therefore have been required". Well spotted!

I did go to the link, I also went directly to the statute on legislation.gov.uk beforehand and had a quick look there. I was just making the point that the link was a summary and not the actual statute so wasn't in itself a definitive source. The pics are lovely, although I don't see how it's possible to tell simply by looking at the bird whether it was in proximity to a nest (in the absence of said nest in the pic) and that an appropriate licence was therefore required.

Indeed, I only quoted your post because it included the summary of the relevant wording. The point I was refuting was Jerra's claim that "it is against the law to photograph them at or even near a nest without a special license" which is pretty misleading and would be, as Athy points out, bloody stupid! With the addition of "intentional or reckless disturbance" it does make sense. Edit - Athy, yep, very much realised you were being flippant, and in doing so you nicely demonstrated how silly the original "all pictures near the nest are illegal" claim was. Oh, and if I can italicise something and also underline it the third formatting shortcut in Word is going to feel terribly left out if I can't also bold it!

First, that link is just someone's summary, it's not actually the statute, so it's not a definitive source, although for the purposes of this let's assume it's an accurate summary. Secondly, the bit I've bolded is what's relevant. It would plainly be utterly absurd if simply taking a photo of anything near a nest would automatically be a criminal offence. You could have a massive lens and do so from half a mile away, the suggestion that the moment you pressed the shutter the local wildlife bobby would drag you off to the cells is plainly ridiculous. If you are simply sat on the front of your boat cruising along and there happens to be a kingfisher in the bushes and you take a photo, then even if it was right on its nest you are not committing an offence. If you steer your boat into said bush and panic the poor thing then yes you could be in trouble, but in the absence of "intentional or reckless" disturbance feel free to click away.

This is worth watching for anybody doubting the benefits of winter tyres. If you can afford the initial outlay it's a very simple decision, they're better all winter even if it doesn't snow, and on the odd occasion when there is snow the difference is night and day. Edit - Failed attempt to embed you tube vid. Will keep trying, but any instructions in the meantime would be gratefully received! Further edit - Sorted (fairly obviously)

I'd echo what others have been saying about Avon Ring being doable in a reasonably enthusiastic week. I did it in September last year going via droitwich (which makes it a bit longer) and think our longest day was probably 8 hours with a couple significantly less. We did manage to get away before 1pm on the first day which was a big help. We had 3 active crew members (the other was pregant so not active!) which I think makes a big difference on the canal sections with all the locks as someone is free to go on ahead to set locks up, and we had a very good method worked out (which meant tardebigge took not much more than 2 1/2 hours). With just two I think the canal sections would take an awful lot longer so consequently significantly longer days would be needed. Off topic, but I'd be tweaking the canal plan defaults if it was telling me that 4 counties needs 9.5 hours per day. With 4 active crew members 4 counties is a stroll in a week. Edit to add: Hadn't spotted that OP is a first timer, in which case with just two I wouldn't even consider trying to get round the Avon Ring. You need to be pretty efficient through all the locks on the canal sections and (without being patronising) it's inevitable that it takes a while for someone new to figure out an efficient method that works well for them. Some of the locks on the Avon have also got slightly awkward approaches/departures and you've got to faff on with ropes front and back in each one which again isn't going to be easy with just two who haven't done it before. So all in all in the OP's shoes I'd definitely be doing Stourport.