Jump to content

On English canals, is a licence really necessary?


NN247

Featured Posts

59 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

I think your mistake if I may call it that was being positive about no licences being required in the past.

I've acknowledged from the start that some regulation has existed for as long as I remember.  My only contention was that for practical purposes, you didn't really need one.  Nothing would happen if you didn't get one, or at least that was the prevailing attitude amongst everyone I knew, and half the boats I was around didn't have one.

 

That's all I've ever said, and it's a hundred percent true.

 

Some people's feelings have been *really* hurt by this objective truth, and they feel very threatened.

Edited by NN247
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, NN247 said:

I've acknowledged from the start that some regulation has existed for as long as I remember.  My only contention was that for practical purposes, you didn't really need one.  Nothing would happen if you didn't get one, or at least that was the prevailing attitude amongst everyone I knew, and half the boats I was around didn't have one.

 

That was true about 45 years ago did you type a 1 instead of a 4?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, NN247 said:

I've acknowledged from the start that some regulation has existed for as long as I remember.  My only contention was that for practical purposes, you didn't really need one.  Nothing would happen if you didn't get one, or at least that was the prevailing attitude amongst everyone I knew, and half the boats I was around didn't have one.

 

That's all I've ever said, and it's a hundred percent true.

 

Some people's have been *really* hurt by this objective truth, and they feel very threatened.

 

There were bubbles of boaters who didn't get licences, and probably still are - it's not true to say it didn't get picked up, it did but, probably more like 20 years ago it wasn't routinely checked and online checking wasn't possible. When I bough my narrow boat "Ripple" in 2006 I took it from Whilton to Fazeley with no visible licence (because it hadn't arrived) and was pondering whether to go through Harecastle or via the Shropshire Union because I knew the tunnel keeper at Harecastle would check, and in the absence of a piece of paper 

I think it's fair to say boats without licence were still very much in a minority, I think at worst something like 12% of boats didn't have a license, but they probably were concentrated in communities - yours may have consisted of people who didn't have a licence, other groups would all have been licenced so I think your recollection is probably accurate but not representative of how things were.

Since then there has been the development of licence checking, teams that walk the towpath with an iPad that has access to the licence database - this, and prosecutions with teeth (baots being seized and lifted out) has made licence evasion much more risky and less common. It still happens though, but you can't fly low enough to be under the radar any more.

 

On the two week trip, you'll probably get spotted but there isn't an "instant fixed penalty notice" as far as I'm aware - they'll see you once or twice, then you'll be off the radar again and they'll barely have had time to send you an email 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If the boat is being moved from a business premises where it does not require a (CRT) licence to another situation/premises where it also does not require a licence then it might be legitimate to do this under cover of a trade plate. However, it would have to be a plate owned by the receiving business and they would be the ones vouching for the legitimacy and the presence of a genuine contract between them and the owner. It would be best to talk to the owner of the dock where the renovation is intended to take place.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, NN247 said:

It was also true 15 years ago.

 

I think a lot of people here are very upset that they've been paying for something they absolutely didn't need to be, lol.

Your still talking b@ll@x, like most of the stuff you’ve wrote IMO.  A Boatmasters usually lasts 5 years, so yours along with your “A” levels aren’t worth the paper they’re written on in regards to living on the Canal, so absolutely no idea why you said you had qualifications?

Edited by PD1964
Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you're in your thirties,  as you say, and lived on the boat to your teens , then you came off the boat at most 39-13, ie 26 years ago. I bought my boat over thirty years ago and certainly had to get a licence for it then. Mooring fees came in a bit later. Not that that matters much, you need one these days, anyway.

If you buy the boat and bung it on hardstanding somewhere while you fit it out you won't need a license until it goes back into the wet. Licence, mooring and BSS compliance aint cheap. Nor is rent for hardstanding, unless you've got a big back garden. A refit will cost a good few grand, too.

The reason you got some suspicion from members of the group is that your initial post showed a rather strange level of ignorance for someone intending to buy a boat - most people do some kind of research on their own before asking us to flesh out any bits they don't understand. And none of us are paying stuff we don't need to - that was another rather juvenile thing to say which also casts your maturity level into doubt.

  • Greenie 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

If you're in your thirties,  as you say, and lived on the boat to your teens , then you came off the boat at most 39-13, ie 26 years ago. I bought my boat over thirty years ago and certainly had to get a licence for it then. Mooring fees came in a bit later. Not that that matters much, you need one these days, anyway.

If you buy the boat and bung it on hardstanding somewhere while you fit it out you won't need a license until it goes back into the wet. Licence, mooring and BSS compliance aint cheap. Nor is rent for hardstanding, unless you've got a big back garden. A refit will cost a good few grand, too.

The reason you got some suspicion from members of the group is that your initial post showed a rather strange level of ignorance for someone intending to buy a boat - most people do some kind of research on their own before asking us to flesh out any bits they don't understand. And none of us are paying stuff we don't need to - that was another rather juvenile thing to say which also casts your maturity level into doubt.

You tell 'm like it is,

 :)

I think he knows the score by now.

Is there something like an Explorer Licence which is sort of temporary? Presumably boat has to be insured, and have a current Boat Safety Scheme Certificate?

I can't see a boatyard giving someone a trade plate, unless they themselves are going fetch the boat, arrange haul out, and do some work on the boat as part of their business. They are in business to make a profit.

Edited by LadyG
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, mrsmelly said:

We moved aboard full time in 1989. The old boat we bought was licensed, we have licensed every boat ever since. The only major change since then was the addition of the poxy BSS which we have also always complied with. There are always those in life that try to get round paying their way, evading paying for anything but still using resources/infrastructure. They are to be treated with the contempt they deserve.

There are parasites in every walk of life - I wonder how the original OP would feel if his coal stock went missing 'because why should I buy something I can just take'. That's what he is proposing.

  • Greenie 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 minutes ago, LadyG said:

You tell 'm like it is,

 :)

I think he knows the score by now.

Is there something like an Explorer Licence which is sort of temporary? Presumably boat has to be insured, and have a current Boat Safety Scheme Certificate?

I can't see a boatyard giving someone a trade plate, unless they themselves are going fetch the boat, arrange haul out, and do some work on the boat as part of their business. They are in business to make a profit.

Easier to just shift it on a lorry. No problems then.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Mike Tee said:

There are parasites in every walk of life - I wonder how the original OP would feel if his coal stock went missing 'because why should I buy something I can just take'. That's what he is proposing.

To be fair, you might as well get the facts. It's easy enough, so it seems, to paint out the boat's name, display no number and live on it for free with very little chance of being caught. Then, when you've had enough of it, just let it sink and walk away.

Whether it's worth the nerves twanging every time someone walks past, I dunno. If you're that sort of person, perhaps they don't twang. There's certainly plenty of them out there, both narrowboats and cruisers.

  • Greenie 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

In the early 1980s the boat was licensed and could be sold with a license. Its only recently that license lapses with sale

Living on the boat in the 80s i remember the waterways police checking the  licence.

in those days they had a patrol boat at bulbourne  which they took out on a jolly ( sorry inspection ) trip every so often.

I think in those days lengthsmen ( remember them) also kept an eye on licences on their patch. I know of one whose mantra was mooring or license.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, LadyG said:

You tell 'm like it is,

 :)

I think he knows the score by now.

Is there something like an Explorer Licence which is sort of temporary? Presumably boat has to be insured, and have a current Boat Safety Scheme Certificate?

I can't see a boatyard giving someone a trade plate, unless they themselves are going fetch the boat, arrange haul out, and do some work on the boat as part of their business. They are in business to make a profit.

 

Two weeks use of a trade plate would have a pro-rated value of less than a tenner.

 

I was merely extrapolating the use of trade plates as it applies to me in relation to the boat sales industry to a slightly different scenario. I used the word "might" because I don't know the particular terms that trade plates are issued to boatyards. What I do know is that I could move a boat in this scenario using a trade plate issued to me and I can use a trade plate provided by someone contracting me to move a boat associated with their business. It would therefore seem a bit perverse if a trade plate couldn't be used for the owner to move the boat themself providing it is being moved from one boatyard (or location outwith CRT jurisdiction) to a legitimate boatyard business on or connected to CRT waters where there is a contract in place directly related to it's renovation.

 

 

Edited by Captain Pegg
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As commercial operators in the 70s we had an annual license instead of tolls and I think pleasure boats also had to be licensed. Not sure of the exact date but a safety certificate came into being around 1978 and it applied to hire craft and houseboats. As we were camping boating we had to get one of the first ones and I got the surveyor to give the Raymond the once over as Arthur was very worried that it would not pass and they would have nowhere to live, in fact he got the certificate. This eventually morphed into the current BSS as there was a lot of lobbying by the boating trade to extend it to private boats.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

53 minutes ago, LadyG said:

 

Is there something like an Explorer Licence which is sort of temporary? Presumably boat has to be insured, and have a current Boat Safety Scheme Certificate?

 

No BSS required for a temporary license  if it is visiting from outside of C&RT and EA waters.

The explorer license is aimed at folks who trailer their boats or who  occasionally visit inland waters from the coast for example. But I have heard of people making a false declaration about where their boat is kept in order to obtain a short term or explorer license . An explorer license isn't particularly cheap .

As I  said earlier a short term license could be purchased by the OP for the purposes of moving his yet to be purchased boat . 

Short term visitor licences | Boating | Canal & River Trust (canalrivertrust.org.uk)

 

 

The figures below may not include the increase from 1st October 

 

image.png.8e0671952f3f6d781a3ce5a4395b7114.png

Edited by MartynG
Link to comment
Share on other sites

When all this was being proposed I was the IWA representative on the committee chaired by the late Tony Grantham. At one meeting I asked if the regulations would have stopped the 3 recent events at Braunston. No 1 NB Fox set on fire by someone passing out whilst smoking, 2 filling the outboard motor in the bottom lock at same time as wife lighting gas stove, 3 pilot light left on and gone out when owner visited boat bit later and lite a cigarette which blew the cabin off the hull and him onto the wharf. 
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, Dav and Pen said:

When all this was being proposed I was the IWA representative on the committee chaired by the late Tony Grantham. At one meeting I asked if the regulations would have stopped the 3 recent events at Braunston. No 1 NB Fox set on fire by someone passing out whilst smoking, 2 filling the outboard motor in the bottom lock at same time as wife lighting gas stove, 3 pilot light left on and gone out when owner visited boat bit later and lite a cigarette which blew the cabin off the hull and him onto the wharf. 
 

I think we all know the BSS is a pointless and useless system. But the powers that be can only extend their empires if they constantly expand it  and it gives the gas blokes and engineers who advise them, and suggest more things to include, a great sense of self importance.

  • Greenie 1
  • Unimpressed 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, roland elsdon said:

In the early 1980s the boat was licensed and could be sold with a license. Its only recently that license lapses with sale

Living on the boat in the 80s i remember the waterways police checking the  licence.

in those days they had a patrol boat at bulbourne  which they took out on a jolly ( sorry inspection ) trip every so often.

I think in those days lengthsmen ( remember them) also kept an eye on licences on their patch. I know of one whose mantra was mooring or license.

Before I owned a boat so over 22 years ago I can remember 3 big BW chaps going down the towpath to have a word with a chap who didn't have a licence, that was the N Oxford. They weren't going to duff him up, it was so they weren't on the receiving end

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Dav and Pen said:

As commercial operators in the 70s we had an annual license instead of tolls and I think pleasure boats also had to be licensed.

When we moved off the Thames and bought a canal boat in 1960 there were lock keepers at most locks who wanted to see your papers, but they've been long gone now along with lengthsmen unfortunately.

 

 

22 minutes ago, Goliath said:

When did the term “continuous cruiser” first come about to differentiate between the licenses of those with a home mooring and those without?

I'm not sure about the term itself, but the principal originated with the 1995 BW Act.

 

Tam

Edited by Tam & Di
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.