CompairHolman

In would respect a notice saying " please respect our privacy" because I like the same. Its not an illegitimate order like " no mooring" . The house could light up a Smokey bonfire or have a party next to your mooring so it works both ways.

I can't see that a public body could claim that any act of parliament could be interpreted to give it powers to invent its own rules, that would be privatisation ?

I'd like to hear what evidence CRT have for their re interpretation of section 42, 1962 transport act after 25/ 30 years of doing the opposite. That would need to employ JK Rowling for that one.

You need to differentiate between those who want to game the system and those who want CRT to follow the law. Its not fair to say that anyone that questions waterways laws is therefore a " piss taker". The idea that you should never challenge authority is a terrible idea for everyone concerned. An organisation that breaks away from the law is always going to crash head on into it at some point, the longer it goes on the worse the outcome. Finding out that a charge was illegal could mean everyone back for years could claim a refund and bankrupt the organisation. This has happened to plenty of big companies that have bankrupted themselves.

Without going into the details of the legal wording, to believe that the 1962 Transport act gives powers to CRT to make these charges you first have to ask why then did BW make all further changes via act of Parliament, at my rough count around ten further acts until the last in 1995, you would have to assume that BW who were there in the 60's didn't know what was in the act that they themselves helped create, but that 30 + years later they suddenly discovered this section of the act ? The 1995 act was negotiated over a period of at a guess one or two years, which all the minutes still exist and can be read online, ( I have read them ) and never in the whole process did BW managment, their legal team, parliamentary legislation writers or any of the user groups consulted ever mention that this act was unnecessary because the power to set any terms and conditions to licences they want was already granted to them in 1962. Actual events make their claim ridiculous even before you get to what the act says or doesn't say.

As far as I know CRT has never attempted to take one of these charges to court , so its safe to assume by now that there is no intention to enforce these charges, a deterrent is worthless if you know it won't be used. So the only basis for their deterrent affect is that boat owners don't know that the charges are not mandatory i.e false. I don't want the waterways run on the basis of legally false rules even if they have positive effects.

Misleading in the way that there is actually no further action planned despite what CRT have implied or led the boat owner to believe. Telling the boat owner the charge is not mandatory from the start would be the opposite of misleading. After all no one would pay a punitive charge that was voluntary.

I would sort out the legal basis of CRT once and for all and stop existing in a grey area of laws that haven't been properly defined. In particular the question of whether the licence is statutory or a contract, or both ? I'm guessing this would end in favour of CRT and the legal dept would push me off the roof.

My understanding is that some people have paid but have been misled that there would be further action if they don't pay, while those that haven't paid have never been pursued for the money. There was a FOI about this a couple of years ago.

This works both ways though, just because CRT claim they can impose their own licence terms and conditions it doesn't mean its a fact. Just because you signed it doesn't make it a lawful contract. So its a grey area, no one has the money to legally challenge CRT, and CRT won't enforce their own invented licence terms and conditions in case someone does challenge them.

I should have added to my original post that this has nothing to do with Stoke Bruerne but is just a picture of one of these signs . I was asking how it stands legally at the present time. As far as I can tell the "charge" ( if it is a charge ) is voluntary and cannot be enforced, and has never been ? Anyone that goes puce when anyone asks about waterways laws and blurts out overwrought cliches like " barrack room lawyer" and " rules is rules" can always ignore this thread.

Probably the difficulty is that the sign doesn't say anything like that.

Can anyone give me a summary of what the latest thinking is on the legality of these kind of signs claiming "payments" for mooring on the towpath in contradiction of the statutory 14 days ? I know it was being challenged by NABO or the like ?

The poor insulation thickness on fridge cabinets is more of a concern than the door.

Interesting document regarding fridges on boats, which puts into perspective the inefficiency of the standard off the shelf front loading fridge with 25 mm or less of insulation stuck in the galley and forgotten about. Compared to this below with 125mm insulation . The possibility of using water cooling via the hull is also interesting ( to me ) possibly a heat sink bonded to the internal hull ? whether canal water is cold enough I don't know. According to the graph below the standard fridge could be loosing up to 250 btu / hr while 150 mm insulation would reduce this to 80 btu / hr. That's a lot of space needed for insulation but would you rather lose some space or have to charge your batteries less often ? There is now available vacuum panel insulation which would solve the space issue, but its expensive, a 30 mm panel would equal around 150. - 200 mm of polyurethane foam. https://www.outbackmarine.com.au/assets/files/RefrigerationSystemsEbook.pdf

" Products excluded from the scope of the Directive include..........craft built for own use provided that they are not subsequently placed on the market during a period of five years "

Fans only move air from one place to another, they cool you by evaporating your sweat faster if you are in their range, the way to get really cool fast is to spray yourself with water and sit in front of the fan, evaporation will do the job. Alternative is to put on a wet shirt . What makes a big difference on my boat is opening the skylight, the hot cabin air can then escape and draw fresh air in through the doors.

Don't let anyone in Willowbridge marina touch your boat is your main concern.

There are no regulations anyone has to comply with concerning the hull, superstructure, size or shape or astetics of inland waterways boats as far as I know. You can licence anything basically if it meets the BSC, and a floating shed with no internal fittings or fixtures and an outboard is exempt from a BSC. There is some legislation regarding " boats fit for the waterway" or something like that, but CRT don't know anything about boats and would not be able to judge if it was or wasn't. Pretty sure they can't refuse a licence application on any such grounds.

No narrow locks though ? So why restrict yourself to 6'10" beam of a narrow boat ? Shipping containers are 8ft wide externally.

Why would you ship a boat made to fit the limited space of narrow canals to somewhere that has no narrow canals, that already has plenty of boats for sale , and could easily be fabricated on site ?

The Guardian lives in a fantasy world , its best to ignore the predictable nonsense they publish. I'm only surprised that they haven't that announced canals are racist yet.

What he said above. Bog standard narrow boats are not complex shapes that require pre cut pieces, basically they are made from standard sizes of plate, sheet and section, mostly straight line cuts to trim to size, the high end ones use patterns they developed by trial and error that are kept secret .

A case a few years back proved CRT don't have the power to decide who gets a licence or not outside of the three statutory requirements even though they tried to refuse a licence application for someone that was previously issued a court order to remove their unlicensed boat from the waterways. You wouldn't " need" to disclose it though as it has no bearing on the policy.

To be fair the number of marine insurance applicants that could have actually murdered Richard Parry is quite small, possibly they have just left this box off the form to keep it simple.