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Another "consultation"


Arthur Marshall

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Has everyone got this, or just me?

 

"Hello, 

The Canal & River Trust will shortly be launching a consultation with boaters to gather feedback on boat licence pricing over the next ten years to help support the long-term future of the 2,000 miles of waterways that our charity looks after.  

We have engaged DJS Research to run the consultation on behalf of the Trust. They will be sending out an invite to you to take part in the consultation questionnaire in the next week. The invite will not come from a Canal & River Trust email address but from an @djsresearch.com email address. "

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This sounds like bad news. Possibly looking for extra justifications to raise the licence fee?

We already know that boaters only contribute a certain percentage of costs,  its simple arithmetic. 

 

I always recall the Yes Minister sketch on surveying, questions being skewed depending on the requisite answers.

It's difficult enough to forecast my income and expenditure for the next two years never mind ten. 

 

Over the next ten years I predict there will be three government elections, four Prime Minister's, eight Chancellor's of the Exchequer. Annual inflation will rise nine times and fall once. Does this prediction help at all?

 

 

Edited by LadyG
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1 minute ago, LadyG said:

This sounds like bad news.

It amazes me that an organisation like the CRT has insufficient resources to research things themselves.

 

 

This sounds like bad news.

It amazes me that an organisation like the CRT has insufficient resources to research things themselves.

 

 

Outsourcing is the new in-house ;) 

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In my professional experience consultation is best carried out by specialist organisations as client bodies rarely have the expertise in-house. Why would they since consultation is usually an activity carried out periodically that doesn't justify having experts on the permanent staff? That said, a consultation exercise will generally be more effective when client staff across various disciplines are actively involved in designing the consultation and managing the specialists, so that the broader corporate knowledge is brought to bear.

What interests me more is why now, given that its not that long since the last licence fee consultation. Is this the beginning of a process for larger increases to counter the fall in government support? Or another look at higher increases for wide beams or continuous cruisers so they 'pay their fair share'?

 

 

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I'm just keeping fingers crossed they don't jack it up too much. 

I imagine the worst case scenario would be that it doubles to about 2k per annum for a 50ft boat. I feel like if they put it higher that that, many many boaters will start to rethink.

But a big price rise won't force out all the boaters on smaller budgets, because those boaters who use housing benefit to pay the license will be covered by their benefits.

 

One thing is certain- they can't afford to price too many people out, or they will lose revenue overall. If they have 30,000 boats currently paying around £1k (on average), that's £30m in total. If they increase the fee to £2k, and they only lose 10,000 boats, they are still increasing revenue, although not by that much. There is the additional benefit of fewer boats using the locks and facilities, so potentially reduced maintenance costs. 

But its no good having a license set at £5k per annum if only 5,000 boaters are able/willing to pay it, and they then only get say £25 million in revenue (correction inserted there).

 

I believe the only point in this exercise is to better understand that graph of license price vs the numbers of licenses sold, so they can find the sweet spot to maximise revenue.

Obviously this is pure guesswork, but my guess would be that if they put the license up by 50%, they will only lose a couple of thousand boats, but it will be a big increase in overall revenue. So my guess is it will be in that sort of area.

 

I think they want to ask boaters:  'what is the highest price you would pay for a license?', so my suggestion would be that everyone does the survey, and when the issue of license cost comes in, state very clearly that any increase would make you rethink, and more than 50% increase means you might quit the waterways. 

If they get the message that there is almost zero tolerance for a price increase, they will be inclined to keep the price as low as possible.

 

They could try something left field like charging a separate fee of say £500 for each region of the country, but again that wont yield much extra, because most boaters will just stay within one or two regions in any given year. In fact CRT might end up getting less overall from that. 

 

 

Edited by Tony1
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Whether people will vote in favour or against the above will be entirely according to whether they see a financial benefit from it .

eg. If the great majority of narrowboats are 57ft and in the water full time the vote will be skewed in favour of them.

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7 minutes ago, MartynG said:

Whether people will vote in favour or against the above will be entirely according to whether they see a financial benefit from it .

eg. If the great majority of narrowboats are 57ft and in the water full time the vote will be skewed in favour of them.

I think that raising the licence fee for just 57 footers is a brilliant idea, no point making it difficult to manage by including all the minority lengths like 43 or 70 foot. 

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I only gave 57 ft as an example.

But it would be a sound plan if only boats over,say, 45ft required a licence and they paid £3k per boat per year.

Smaller boats pay nothing.

It would solve a lot of problems.

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1 hour ago, Hudds Lad said:

It’s all in the wording, a specialist company has vast experience of phrasing the questions properly to yield the results you require.

They should also just be better at comprehensible questions and answers. Too many surveys are produced by someone with little experience that doesn't think it through, and you end up with the option of giving a nonsense response or abstaining. Though that's not to say specialists are immune to such folly. 

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33 minutes ago, MartynG said:

Whether people will vote in favour or against the above will be entirely according to whether they see a financial benefit from it .

eg. If the great majority of narrowboats are 57ft and in the water full time the vote will be skewed in favour of them.

I doubt anyone will get a vote on this.

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1 hour ago, MartynG said:

I only gave 57 ft as an example.

But it would be a sound plan if only boats over,say, 45ft required a licence and they paid £3k per boat per year.

Smaller boats pay nothing.

It would solve a lot of problems.

You could be paid by crt if your boat is 3foot Draught as you are doing there dredging for them.😡😡

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1 hour ago, Tony1 said:

If they increase the fee to £2k, and they only lose 10,000 boats, they are still increasing revenue, although not by that much. There is the additional benefit of fewer boats using the locks and facilities, so potentially reduced maintenance costs.

You don’t necessarily lose the boats though, you may instead lose the people willing to pay who decide it’s easier to not pay anything and dodge the consequences for as long as possible.

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The only thing worth doing with a consultation is writing extra bits in the comments section. The rest is meaningless. Individual comments from people who can be arsed to take the time to write them have a disproportionate effect on the outcomes. 

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2 minutes ago, Hudds Lad said:

You don’t necessarily lose the boats though, you may instead lose the people willing to pay who decide it’s easier to not pay anything and dodge the consequences for as long as possible.

 

I'm sure you're right in that a big price increase will also see an increase in non-payment, but over a few years CRT will catch up with all of them, and the boats will be removed. 

Most people who can afford it will cough up an extra thousand rather than risk losing a boat worth maybe £30k. 

There may be a glut of used boats come onto the market if the license goes up by a ridiculous amount, but if its less than a 50% increase, my guess is that 95% of the licensed boats will stay in use- which is why I think they'll go for that kind of figure, or a bit less. 

Some people maybe even encouraged onto the waterways by the chance of buying a narrowboat a bit cheaper than previously. 

 

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1 hour ago, Tony1 said:

 

I'm just keeping fingers crossed they don't jack it up too much. 

I imagine the worst case scenario would be that it doubles to about 2k per annum for a 50ft boat. I feel like if they put it higher that that, many many boaters will start to rethink.

But a big price rise won't force out all the boaters on smaller budgets, because those boaters who use housing benefit to pay the license will be covered by their benefits.

 

One thing is certain- they can't afford to price too many people out, or they will lose revenue overall. If they have 30,000 boats currently paying around £1k (on average), that's £30m in total. If they increase the fee to £2k, and they only lose 10,000 boats, they are still increasing revenue, although not by that much. There is the additional benefit of fewer boats using the locks and facilities, so potentially reduced maintenance costs. 

But its no good having a license set at £5k per annum if only 5,000 boaters are able/willing to pay it, and they then only get say £25 million in revenue (correction inserted there).

 

I believe the only point in this exercise is to better understand that graph of license price vs the numbers of licenses sold, so they can find the sweet spot to maximise revenue.

Obviously this is pure guesswork, but my guess would be that if they put the license up by 50%, they will only lose a couple of thousand boats, but it will be a big increase in overall revenue. So my guess is it will be in that sort of area.

 

I think they want to ask boaters:  'what is the highest price you would pay for a license?', so my suggestion would be that everyone does the survey, and when the issue of license cost comes in, state very clearly that any increase would make you rethink, and more than 50% increase means you might quit the waterways. 

If they get the message that there is almost zero tolerance for a price increase, they will be inclined to keep the price as low as possible.

 

They could try something left field like charging a separate fee of say £500 for each region of the country, but again that wont yield much extra, because most boaters will just stay within one or two regions in any given year. In fact CRT might end up getting less overall from that. 

 

 

Keeping the price "as low as possible" does not mean no increase, and could still mean a massive increase.

CRT are tasked with maintaining the network and are currently not receiving enough money to do so, one of the few income sources they have control over is license fees. What would you prefer, no increase and even lower levels of maintenance and more closures, or a raise in license fees in return for more maintenance.

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3 minutes ago, Barneyp said:

Keeping the price "as low as possible" does not mean no increase, and could still mean a massive increase.

CRT are tasked with maintaining the network and are currently not receiving enough money to do so, one of the few income sources they have control over is license fees. What would you prefer, no increase and even lower levels of maintenance and more closures, or a raise in license fees in return for more maintenance.

As has been said many times, a more graduated license fee (bigger for bigger/wider/newer/whatever boats) will raise more money and drive fewer less well-off people off the canals than a flat-rate increase...

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2 hours ago, MartynG said:

Whether people will vote in favour or against the above will be entirely according to whether they see a financial benefit from it .

eg. If the great majority of narrowboats are 57ft and in the water full time the vote will be skewed in favour of them.

It's a consultation not a poll, you know just like the last one 😂

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4 hours ago, David Mack said:

In my professional experience consultation is best carried out by specialist organisations as client bodies rarely have the expertise in-house. Why would they since consultation is usually an activity carried out periodically that doesn't justify having experts on the permanent staff? That said, a consultation exercise will generally be more effective when client staff across various disciplines are actively involved in designing the consultation and managing the specialists, so that the broader corporate knowledge is brought to bear.

What interests me more is why now, given that its not that long since the last licence fee consultation. Is this the beginning of a process for larger increases to counter the fall in government support? Or another look at higher increases for wide beams or continuous cruisers so they 'pay their fair share'?

 

 

Obviously I am against raising my licence fee (cc),  as I contribute to maintenance on the cut all year round just by navigating the navigations.

I am able to report poor refuse management, and query lack of consistency in recycling protocols.

I am useful to to train up new and aspiring vlockies, and will also assess their performance  if it fails to meet my standards :)

Objectively. I think the CRT need to look to other sources of funding than boaters who are minority users.

The government are currently waving the environmental flag, if the CRT can prove, and improve their environmental impact year on year they may generate more governmental funding. Farmers are currently getting support through ELMS, that may be a business model for CRT.

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