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When did the BW moorings auctions begin?


Andrew Denny

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21 minutes ago, Andrew Denny said:

Thanks. Someone has said to me they had an auctioned mooring for 18 years - that must be mistaken then. 

They may have been on the same mooring for 18 years, just winning the auction when that started instead of just contract renewal.

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26 minutes ago, Andrew Denny said:

Thanks. Hmm, that's interesting. I'm working on a story about a longstanding mooring. A lovely story, nothing controversial, but I just want to fact-check what I'm being told. 

Co-incidentally, this week I came across an article  in a back number of NABO News for July 2007  which was discussing this subject and was concerned about the change of procedure when it was going to be introduced later in 2007. If you need more info let me know and I can send you a copy of the article.

 

Howard

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7 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

They may have been on the same mooring for 18 years, just winning the auction when that started instead of just contract renewal.

Except that if you already have a contract for the mooring you will be able to renew it and it will NOT go to auction unless you breach the t&c, fail to pay or decide to vacate the mooring. 

 

It's a common misunderstanding. 

 

After the 3 year term at the bid price the mooring price returns to the "local rate" and you will be offered a renewal of contract at the relevant time. 

 

 

 

 

2007 sounds about right for the initial BW mooring auctions taking place. 

Edited by magnetman
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10 hours ago, Andrew Denny said:

I forgot to add, are moorings auctions still a thing?

 

 

 

Sort of, but most of them are a farce. Most expire with no bids as the starting price is so high. 

 

I 'won' one about three months ago when the starting price was about 10% higher than I was paying in a local marina. Being a bit weird I prefer it on line with no facilities so I placed a max bid at the start price, and won it. I'd seen it auctioned with no bids several times previous, like. I'll be giving up my other (£4k a year) on line mooring with no facilities either, shortly. 

 

 

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12 hours ago, MtB said:

But I think this suits CRT just fine as their unwritten policy appears to be to get rid of all on-line moorings.

 

 

But they are loosing a lot of revenue, there is only one boat on the Coventry at Tuttle Hill. The off side below Big Lock at Middlewich looks abandoned by them and very few Towpath side near the recycling centre . 

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39 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

But they are loosing a lot of revenue, there is only one boat on the Coventry at Tuttle Hill. The off side below Big Lock at Middlewich looks abandoned by them and very few Towpath side near the recycling centre . 

 

 

Quite. They are over-pricing moorings with massively high starting prices on auctions, and CRT claims it is cheaper for them to leave moorings lying unused than to populate them with boaters paying less than what CRT considers market rate.

 

Which is of course a load of ol' tosh as the extra costs to CRT when a boat moors on an unserviced bit of towpath are trivial. In fact I suspect most of the costs are office costs incurred administrating the tenancy agreement and chasing the moorer up if not paid, and not much else.

  • Greenie 1
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I had a towpath LTM for a couple of years with a concrete edge. Grand Union. In my 28 years living on boats I have never once out the engine in gear when the boat is moored but people do it. 

 

During the time I was there a 40ft section of concrete edge collapsed into the canal. 

 

This will have been quite expensive to sort out. Another problem with towpath moorings is people storing random shite on the towpath. 

 

Yes it is a breach of t&c but if the boat then leaves it is up to CRT to arrange to have the waste removed. 

 

Towpath moorings are interesting. It looks like it's just free money but once you get people living there it gets a whole lot more complicated. 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, magnetman said:

I had a towpath LTM for a couple of years with a concrete edge. Grand Union. In my 28 years living on boats I have never once out the engine in gear when the boat is moored but people do it. 

 

During the time I was there a 40ft section of concrete edge collapsed into the canal. 

 

This will have been quite expensive to sort out. Another problem with towpath moorings is people storing random shite on the towpath. 

 

Yes it is a breach of t&c but if the boat then leaves it is up to CRT to arrange to have the waste removed. 

 

Towpath moorings are interesting. It looks like it's just free money but once you get people living there it gets a whole lot more complicated. 

 

 

 

 

 

Notwithstanding all you point out, I still can't believe it costs CRT £3k+ a year on average to rent out a towpath mooring, meaning they find it cheaper to leave them vacant.  

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16 hours ago, MtB said:

But I think this suits CRT just fine as their unwritten policy appears to be to get rid of all on-line moorings.

 

 

Their written policy is no longer to replace online moorings with offline moorings  and  new online moorings whilst not exactly encouraged are permitted if they meet the guidelines in the new policy. I think this policy was updated in the last couple of years, but is quite well hidden on the CRT website. I think I have a copy on my PC but can't just find a link to post it on here.

 

I should add the process to create new online moorings ( not end of garden) is long winded and interminable... whether its for 4 or 400 it's the same process ...

Edited by jonathanA
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Accountants always seem to be able to produce figures to justify anything that management requests.

 

When I was working  at Plessey in the early 1970's, management was  concerned at the amount being spent on Xerox photocopying. Rank (the then-licencees for Xerox in the UK) initially refused to reduce the royalty rate, which I think was around 5d per A4 page.

 

Now at that time, we could get an A4 photocopy at our local library for 6d. (old money, so that roughly dates the event). By including the originating  person's time to compose and  revise a single-page memo,  have it typed and sent, and the receiving person's time to read and file it, management came up with the "true" cost of a single Xerox photocopy as 7/6d, and this was the rate per page that the customer was to be charged, rather than the previous 5d (plus mark-up).  Signed autorisation for Xerox copying had to be obtained from your head of department.  The main customer of our division was the MOD (this was in the days of "cost-plus" contracts) : however, departments still had to operate within budgets, so we investigated alternatives.

 

Many of the standard forms used for MOD work had  blue-printed grids and guides and box fills etc. intentionally designed not to reproduce with a Xerox, but they obliterated text on other makes of photocopiers that were not blind to blue. It brought the change note procedure (for which MOD required 20 copies, never mind triplicate!)  to a temporary halt, until we found that our offset litho was blue-blind. Litho had a minimum print run of 50 copies, so the other 30 copies were so much scrap paper, but litho was still a fraction of the Xerox cost.  Xerox usage dropped dramatically, a cheaper rate was soon agreed, and (cheaper) normality restored.

Edited by Ronaldo47
typos
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