Enough is enough!

[MtB]

4 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

You're missing Mike's point Tony.

 

If a current owner sells their boat because they won't or can't pay higher fees, the buyer already knows what the fees are and will and can pay them.

 

The boat stays on the waterway, and the higher fees get paid.  It's very unlikely the new buyer wants the boat as a garden feature off the water.

 

If the market price of boats drops to compensate for higher annual costs, that doesn't affect CRT at all.

 

Yes exactly. 

 

And a by-product would be a regularisation of the boat market. Boat prices have gone sky high to the artificially low cost of ownership. If this is corrected, a sensible boat market will return. 

 

Also, the widebeam problem needs addressing. The dozens of new widebeams being launched every week and filling up our canals is only happening because the cost of ownership is so ridiculously out of kilter with the size of the things. A 50% widebeam surcharge would seem about right, not the current 20%. Or 90% for the 70ft x 13ft behemoths.

[IanD]

Assuming CART think that putting up license fees will bring in more money, instead of massively putting up the license fees in one jump wouldn't it make more sense to use the "boiling a frog" principle -- put them up significantly (maybe 25% or so?) each year and monitor what happens to the number of boats on the system and the total license fee income? If they overdo it and see the income drop they could always drop back by a step, but what they'd have done is found the level of license fee which raises most money to pay for the canal system.

 

Given that the current narrowboat fees are typically about £1000 (£800-£1200 depending on length) and lots of otherwise cash-strapped people can afford this, I suspect that increasing them to £2000 or £2500 (which would take 3-4 years) wouldn't drive many people off the canals, but the £5k which keeps getting bandied around would.

 

Yes this would cause some people to leave the canals (maybe 20%?) but this is inevitable if the fees go up...

 

 

3 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

Yes exactly. 

 

And a by-product would be a regularisation of the boat market. Boat prices have gone sky high to the artificially low cost of ownership. If this is corrected, a sensible boat market will return. 

 

Also, the widebeam problem needs addressing. The dozens of new widebeams being launched every week and filling up our canals is only happening because the cost of ownership is so ridiculously out of kilter with the size of the things. A 50% widebeam surcharge would seem about right, not the current 20%. Or 90% for the 70ft x 13ft behemoths.

 

Why not just charge by area (L*W)? It's what many countries do for property, you see prices quoted in EUR/m2 which at least gets round the expensive shoebox problem.

[TheBiscuits]

Just now, IanD said:

Yes this would cause some people to leave the canals (maybe 20%?) but this is inevitable if the fees go up...

 

But not taking their boats with them. The new buyers will still have to pay the increased fees.

 

 

[IanD]

Just now, TheBiscuits said:

 

But not taking their boats with them. The new buyers will still have to pay the increased fees.

 

 

 

Or cheap wrecks will be scrapped because people willing to pay the raised fees don't want to live on them...

[TheBiscuits]

5 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

Or cheap wrecks will be scrapped because people willing to pay the raised fees don't want to live on them...

 

Some, certainly.  I'd be astonished if it was anything like 20% though - that would be around 7000 boats on CRT waters alone.

[Tony1]

17 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

You're missing Mike's point Tony.

 

If a current owner sells their boat because they won't or can't pay higher fees, the buyer already knows what the fees are and will and can pay them.

 

The boat stays on the waterway, and the higher fees get paid.  It's very unlikely the new buyer wants the boat as a garden feature off the water.

 

If the market price of boats drops to compensate for higher annual costs, that doesn't affect CRT at all.

 

I agree with that, but I'm anticipating that with a £5k license, there would be very many fewer buyers around than there are currently, so thousands of boats will go on the market but remain unsold for a very long time. 

 

It is certainly correct that either way the boat stays on the waterway, but with many owners seeking to sell as soon as they possibly can, they will look at all options.

Perhaps some owners would use dry-land storage facilities in order to avoid paying for a license? Some might stick their boats into a cheap marina and never take it out, thus avoiding the license fee? Some will decide to go full time CCing, and reduce their costs by avoiding a marina charge.

Who the hell knows, but it would have profound effects for sure, some of them unforeseen. 

 

There may be a few who cant sell their boats, but also can't afford the higher license fee, so those will be forced to scrap their boats, or perhaps sell them at near-scrap value. 

 

As you say, CRT/DEFRA won't be overly concerned with boat prices as such.

It seems they are making a £100m loss anyway on keeping the waterways navigable and habitable, so anything that reduces that loss, especially in the difficult financial times that lie ahead, might be welcome.

 

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

 For less than £5000 I could have my boat transported to Ireland and begin a new adventure. 
 

An option for those that NEVER go anywhere would be to go on hard standing and not pay a license. 

 

 

 

 

[dmr]

11 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Pessimistic, but not necessarily incorrect.

 

I think it's less cut and dried than that though.  More shareboats would be likely to split costs amongst a group of leisure boaters.  Maybe a trend back towards smaller boats for leisure use as many of the old guard in the IWA still talk fondly about the 24 foot cruisers they had in the past.

 

 

 

Really there are just too many major unknowns to make any predictions. Boating is incredibly popular now. Is this a short term blip or the start of a long term post covid trend?

I suspect with more people getting a taste for remote working from home that residential boating and continuous cruising is going to start a long term increase.

On the down side climate change induced storms might cause more very expensive failures (like reservoirs and Hebden floods) and more summer water shortages.

[magpie patrick]

34 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

old guard in the IWA still talk fondly about the 24 foot cruisers they had in the past.

 

 

 Oi, some of us HAVE one of those - and don't go calling me old guard, I'm 55! 

[IanD]

18 minutes ago, Goliath said:

 For less than £5000 I could have my boat transported to Ireland and begin a new adventure. 
 

An option for those that NEVER go anywhere would be to go on hard standing and not pay a license.

 

 

You could move to Ireland, but the vast majority of boaters -- including most of the new liveaboards in the last few years which have driven numbers up -- can't.

 

Similarly they can't go on hard standing because where do you put thousands of boats on hard standing (possibly with services...) in popular areas?

 

Think what *most* boaters could realistically do, not just you... 😉

Edited October 1, 2021 by IanD

[TheBiscuits]

28 minutes ago, IanD said:

Why not just charge by area (L*W)?

 

That was the most favoured suggestion in the responses to the 2018 licencing consultation, so CRT chose to keep length banding and apply an uplift on widebeams.  Naturally.

[TheBiscuits]

2 minutes ago, magpie patrick said:

 Oi, some of us HAVE one of those - and don't go calling me old guard, I'm 55! 

 

Not a comment on current small boat owners, more on those who "upgraded" over the past few decades.

 

It drives me spare - people who very rarely move their 57' shiny narrow boats then whinge about one paddle being out of action. 

 

Start pouring gin down them and they start telling you about how to carry tirfors and 8x4 sheets of plywood on a 22 ft Norman so you can force your way through a disused lock!

 

I do accept that fifty years has reduced their ability to do so, but many of them seemed to enjoy their little boats a lot more than their floating cottages.

 

(55 sounds quite old to me!  )

 

[IanD]

9 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

That was the most favoured suggestion in the responses to the 2018 licencing consultation, so CRT chose to keep length banding and apply an uplift on widebeams.  Naturally.

 

But the uplift on widebeams is *much* too small. Maybe CART should do the same "boiling a frog" trick, increase the uplift by maybe 20% per year until it reaches the L*W figure after 3 years?

[matty40s]

14 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

That was the most favoured suggestion in the responses to the 2018 licencing consultation, so CRT chose to keep length banding and apply an uplift on widebeams.  Naturally.

This was the IWA key pressure point at that time.

[TheBiscuits]

6 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

But the uplift on widebeams is *much* too small. Maybe CART should do the same "boiling a frog" trick, increase the uplift by maybe 20% per year until it reaches the L*W figure after 3 years?

 

The responses and discussion at the time was quite interesting.

 

I'm quite ambivalent on the topic, but the arguments boiled down to "we don't like fat boats at all" on one side and "it's not fair to make us pay more than we have been doing" on the other.

 

There is a valid argument that a fatty can't use all the network so should get a discount that cancels out the extra width, but nobody seemed to think that should also apply to 70 foot narrow boats too.  You don't see many of them on the C&H or the L&L above Wigan ...

[IanD]

16 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

The responses and discussion at the time was quite interesting.

 

I'm quite ambivalent on the topic, but the arguments boiled down to "we don't like fat boats at all" on one side and "it's not fair to make us pay more than we have been doing" on the other.

 

There is a valid argument that a fatty can't use all the network so should get a discount that cancels out the extra width, but nobody seemed to think that should also apply to 70 foot narrow boats too.  You don't see many of them on the C&H or the L&L above Wigan ...

 

The "it's not fair to ask us to pay more than we have been doing" argument has "we've been getting an unfair bargain for years and don't want this to change" written on the other side of the coin...

 

The reality is that fat boats on the wrong parts of the canal system where there isn't enough space or water -- which is to say, a lot of it -- are becoming an increasing problem as far as obstructing navigation is concerned, either when moored or travelling, their popularity is being driven by the "much more space for the buck" mindset, and numbers are rising rapidly.

 

From the point of view of CART (and many non-wide boaters, who after all are the majority of boaters on the canals) something needs to be done to control the numbers, and short of limiting where they can go or moor or numbers of licenses (which would be very difficult to do and contentious) the obvious way to do this is via the license fee -- and in the same way as buying/renting a property (in most places), charging by area is the cleanest and fairest way to do this. This will also correct the anomaly that marinas *do* effectively charge by area, so today this encourages wideboats to go out onto the canal and moor in unsuitable places to save money.

 

Given the effective space inside a wideboat they'll still be paying less per usable square foot than a narrowboat and it's the area that benefits people, so it's not unreasonable that this is how they should be charged.

 

Of course this will lead to big protests from wideboat owners like Peter because their fees will go up by at least 50% depending on width, but it's difficult to avoid the argument that this is correcting a historical wideboat bargain which disadvantages narrowboats...

Edited October 1, 2021 by IanD

[magpie patrick]

12 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

There is a valid argument that a fatty can't use all the network so should get a discount that cancels out the extra width, but nobody seemed to think that should also apply to 70 foot narrow boats too.  You don't see many of them on the C&H or the L&L above Wigan ...

 

Follow that line to it's logical conclusion and I'll end up paying more because more mooring spots are available to me and I can always squeeze in somewhere. It's not my fault others went and bought lanky, overstretched or rather portly vessels is it? 

[MtB]

14 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

I'm quite ambivalent on the topic, but the arguments boiled down to "we don't like fat boats at all" on one side and "it's not fair to make us pay more than we have been doing" on the other.

 

 

As I remember it, the main argument was "we only get access to half the system because we bought boats too fat to fit, therefore we should only pay half the license fee.

 

Not valid IMO as they then go on to use whichever half of the system they are trapped on, twice as much.

 

 

[TheBiscuits]

1 minute ago, MtB said:

 

As I remember it, the main argument was "we only get access to half the system because we bought boats too fat to fit, therefore we should only pay half the license fee.

 

Not valid IMO as they then go on to use whichever half of the system they are trapped on, twice as much.

 

 

 

Yeah, but half the system twice as much should be the same price, not twice the price.  It's a fair argument to make whether you agree with them or not.

 

7 minutes ago, IanD said:

short of limiting where they can go or moor

 

That is exactly what CRT chose to do in the T&C's consultation recently. 

 

Of course they cocked it up on their first few attempts, to the point their own historic boats wouldn't have been allowed to be at Cambrian Wharf anymore, but that's not the point!

 

 

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

22 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

You could move to Ireland, but the vast majority of boaters -- including most of the new liveaboards in the last few years which have driven numbers up -- can't.

 

Similarly they can't go on hard standing because where do you put thousands of boats on hard standing (possibly with services...) in popular areas?

 

Think what *most* boaters could realistically do, not just you... 😉

 

51 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

You could move to Ireland, but the vast majority of boaters -- including most of the new liveaboards in the last few years which have driven numbers up -- can't.

 

Similarly they can't go on hard standing because where do you put thousands of boats on hard standing (possibly with services...) in popular areas?

 

Think what *most* boaters could realistically do, not just you... 😉

Just giving 2 options for all boaters. What most choose is up to them. 
 

😉 

 

 

[MtB]

8 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

Yeah, but half the system twice as much should be the same price, not twice the price.  It's a fair argument to make whether you agree with them or not.

 

Not really. They are also taking up twice as much canal space, as well as using it twice as much. So that makes FOUR times the license fee of thinnies! 

[TheBiscuits]

1 minute ago, MtB said:

 

Not really. They are also taking up twice as much canal space, as well as using it twice as much. So that makes FOUR times the license fee of thinnies! 

 

I was referring to the space when I said using it twice as much.  Most fatties don't seem to move twice as often from what I see.

 

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

Whether licenses are increased or not, surely it’s a given that boating alone will never be able pay for the system. 
 

Identifying others who benefit from the system and getting their pound would be more beneficial than hiking up the license fee to a ridiculous level and forcing boats off? 

Edited October 1, 2021 by Goliath

[IanD]

5 minutes ago, Goliath said:

Whether licenses are increased or not, surely it’s a given that boating alone will never be able pay for the system. 
 

Identifying others who benefit from the system and getting their pound would be more beneficial than hiking up the license fee to a ridiculous level and forcing boats off? 

 

But who, and how do you collect the pound and enforce the rules -- toll gates to get onto the towpath, cycle licenses?

 

I don't think most people want to hike the fee up to ridiculous levels (£5000?) and force lots of boats off the canals. But if CART want to get more money from boaters to maintain the canals, one way is to put the license fees up to the point where a few people leave and then stop, it's what every company who sells things does to maximise their income -- which is what CART desperately need.

[TheBiscuits]

9 minutes ago, Goliath said:

Identifying others who benefit from the system and getting their pound would be more beneficial than hiking up the license fee to a ridiculous level and forcing boats off? 

 

Maybe they should employ people to stand on the towpath asking for donations ...