C&RT License Survey

[magnetman]

 

Fairground games. 

 

Coconut shy where kids get to pay to throw coconuts at passing boats.

Coconut duck. 

 

&c. 

 

There is money to be made in this pleasure park from all the plebs that turn up. 

 

Guess the weight of the scruffy boater?

[MtB]

"Spot the licenced boat"?

 

[___]

33 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

I don't think so, given the official population is 68m.

 

Unofficial opinions are we are well over 70m, and the housing shortage appears to support this view. 

 

 

 

 

And CRTs grant is £739m over 15 years. So about £0.75 per head and £1.50 per taxpayer per year.

 

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by Captain Pegg

[Barneyp]

1 hour ago, Riverdee said:

Someone wrote an email to the Waterways Magazine saying if walkers, cyclists and other visitors would pay £1 CRT's funding problem would disappear.

Great point in my opinion.

Yes, and the key word is IF, first of all if there was a charge for access then less people would visit, and there would be the costs of administrating and enforcing the payment, which would mean the charge would need to be higher to solve the funding problem, the higher charge would increase the number of people choosing not to visit, meaning a still higher charge, meaning even less people, etc, etc, etc.

2 hours ago, Colin Brendan said:

There are many things that are not subject to market pressures. Many public assets are deliberately exempt or buffered from these pressures because it is generally recognised that an unrestricted market disproportionately favours wealthy people and screws over others people. A lot of common land is exempt from market pressures. I imagine you yourself benefit from public assets that are not subject to market pressure - perhaps the NHS for example! I guess the canal is public/common land even if CRT manage it on behalf of the public - so the idea that common land like public parks and the canal should be subject to unchecked market pressures is a worrying one. The canals are an asset that fell into disrepair, revived largely by voluntary and public effort - I cannot think of a better case for free market pressure exemption.

 

Saying that people can rely on the social state is a fallacy(i wish it wasnt!). You may have found yourself in the fortunate position of state/dwp funded mooring and license, but I think you are the exception, not the rule. I know of many instances where people are being denied financial support by dwp, and many instances where this struggle has become so difficult that people give up. Saying that people can rely on the welfare state is often used as justification for introducing unfair market pressures. It is fine on paper, but often or perhaps rarely translates to the real world. There is a strong possibility that the welfare state will only be reduced in future.

 

Generally when people argue 'life is tough, get used to it', they actually mean 'your life is tough - get used to it (I'm alright jack)'

For something not to be subject to market pressures it has to be funded by an alternative means. In general that means charity or government funding.

CRT haven't chosen to be dependant on market forces, it's been forced on them by the government grant not being enough to maintain the canals, and the great British public choosing not to donate enough.

So CRT are having to increase licence fees by as much as the market will allow.

[magnetman]

I think the market would allow a much bigger increase in reality. 

It really isn't expensive to be able to use several hundred miles of operational canals for £25 a week. 

And avoid paying council tax. 

 

one could see how people might cotton onto this one. 

 

 

As an organisation is the CRT authorised to allow people to personally gain financially from use of their waterways? 

 

I would suggest that someone renting the house out and living on a Boat is gaining financially from the low licence fee. Effectively the CRT are subsidising this behaviour. 

[IanD]

15 minutes ago, Barneyp said:

Yes, and the key word is IF, first of all if there was a charge for access then less people would visit, and there would be the costs of administrating and enforcing the payment, which would mean the charge would need to be higher to solve the funding problem, the higher charge would increase the number of people choosing not to visit, meaning a still higher charge, meaning even less people, etc, etc, etc.

For something not to be subject to market pressures it has to be funded by an alternative means. In general that means charity or government funding.

CRT haven't chosen to be dependant on market forces, it's been forced on them by the government grant not being enough to maintain the canals, and the great British public choosing not to donate enough.

So CRT are having to increase licence fees by as much as the market will allow.

Not to mention both the practical impossibility and costs of trying to charge millions of visitors to the canals anything... 😞

 

The last two lines sum up the real reason for the license fee increase, and the consultation explains why CART chose the changes they did.

 

All boaters will pay more as a result, but the increase will be bigger for some -- the ones who have been historically underpaying for what they get -- than others.

[Arthur Marshall]

I grew up in Chichester and we used to go for a Sunday walk along the canal. I never realised canals actually had boats on them and could be navigated on, or realised that heap of rotting timber was a lock, until about twenty years later. I suspect that's the future of most of the system, while the rest of it works as a leisure facility. It's unsustainable in its present state, as failures become more and more regular and expensive. Hardly a week now goes by without a major stoppage somewhere, mostly due to lack of ongoing attention and maintenance. It aint going to get no better.

[Riverdee]

57 minutes ago, IanD said:

Not to mention both the practical impossibility and costs of trying to charge millions of visitors to the canals anything... 😞

Wouldn't a donation box do? 

I for one, whether I have a boat or not, would not have a problem putting £1 or more in a donation box if I see one.

I think that some canal and towpath visitors think its born this way and needs no maintenance or costs to keep it going...

[IanD]

4 minutes ago, Riverdee said:

Wouldn't a donation box do? 

I for one, whether I have a boat or not, would not have a problem putting £1 or more in a donation box if I see one.

I think that some canal and towpath visitors think its born this way and needs no maintenance or costs to keep it going...

An unattended donation box? Really? What do you think the odds are of there being any money (which many people don't carry nowadays...) left in it when CART come to empty it?

 

The only thing that might work would be a contactless pay terminal, solar-powered so no cabling needed, with a cellular link for payments.

 

Problem is that these aren't cheap, are likely to be vandalised in many palces, and most people simply won't bother donating anything -- just like they don't to many other worthy or charitable causes... 😞

Edited December 21, 2023 by IanD

[Mad Harold]

1 hour ago, magnetman said:

I think the market would allow a much bigger increase in reality. 

It really isn't expensive to be able to use several hundred miles of operational canals for £25 a week. 

And avoid paying council tax. 

 

one could see how people might cotton onto this one. 

 

 

As an organisation is the CRT authorised to allow people to personally gain financially from use of their waterways? 

 

I would suggest that someone renting the house out and living on a Boat is gaining financially from the low licence fee. Effectively the CRT are subsidising this behaviour. 

If you live on your boat,yes I agree you are getting quite a good deal.

If you are a hobby boater and I think these are the majority,canal boating is a rather expensive hobby.

Why not charge livaboard boaters another £1000 a year weather they have a home mooring or are continuous cruisers.

Edited December 21, 2023 by Mad Harold

[Riverdee]

30 minutes ago, IanD said:

An unattended donation box?

I actually did have in mind a contactless/tap-and-donate box, but as you said, it most likely not cheap.

So how about trialling it in one popular area and see how much profit they make?

[magnetman]

27 minutes ago, Mad Harold said:

If you live on your boat,yes I agree you are getting quite a good deal.

If you are a hobby boater and I think these are the majority,canal boating is a rather expensive hobby.

Why not charge livaboard boaters another £1000 a year weather they have a home mooring or are continuous cruisers.

I'm not convinced someone living on a Boat and paying ten grand mooring fee is getting it especially cheap to be fair. 

 

 

If the CRT could access Land Registry by name search then they could cross reference people's circumstances and charge those who own a house and a Boat more than those who only own a Boat. 

 

It seems wrong to be charging people with no other options more but those with other options must surely be valid targets for increased licence fees.

 

In amongst all this of course is the ridiculous price of secondhand Boats. 

 

[IanD]

16 minutes ago, Riverdee said:

I actually did have in mind a contactless/tap-and-donate box, but as you said, it most likely not cheap.

So how about trialling it in one popular area and see how much profit they make?

That might be worth a try, maybe somewhere like Little Venice or Camden Lock. My guess is that it would be largely ignored and lose money (and still get vandalised!), but I'd be happy to be wrong... 🙂

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

6 minutes ago, magnetman said:

If you live on your boat,yes I agree you are getting quite a good deal.

 

46 minutes ago, Mad Harold said:

If you live on your boat,yes I agree you are getting quite a good deal.

If you are a hobby boater and I think these are the majority,canal boating is a rather expensive hobby.

Why not charge livaboard boaters another £1000 a year weather they have a home mooring or are continuous cruisers.

too damn right me ship matey,

quids in,

no Council tax you see 👍

no rob dog landlord to pay either,

come and go as I please,

or not,

free moorings and water,

showers and eslans,

must really piss some folk off who live in multi bedroom houses and don’t get the chance to empty there own big. 

 

are you proposing CRT should become the rob dogs?

they could earn themselves a pretty penny doing that,

contracts drawn up, 6 months money in advance, deposits (never to be returned), references required. 
yes, I can see this working,

keep those dastardly scrotes away 😃👍

how dare anyone avoid ‘paying the man’,

[magnetman]

Well it makes sense if the aim is to retain canals in working order. 

 

Obviously the answer is regional tolls based on demand. 

 

It would be quite funny to watch all the people who thought they wanted to live on a Boat in London suddenly shifting to Hemel Hempstead which then gets a demand spike. 

 

I sometimes wonder if sailing around the world in a sloop may in fact be the answer. 

 

When I finally get my enormous pecuniary legacy from the contested Will I am going to look into it..

 

 

 

 

[peterboat]

1 hour ago, Arthur Marshall said:

I grew up in Chichester and we used to go for a Sunday walk along the canal. I never realised canals actually had boats on them and could be navigated on, or realised that heap of rotting timber was a lock, until about twenty years later. I suspect that's the future of most of the system, while the rest of it works as a leisure facility. It's unsustainable in its present state, as failures become more and more regular and expensive. Hardly a week now goes by without a major stoppage somewhere, mostly due to lack of ongoing attention and maintenance. It aint going to get no better.

Totally correct Arthur,  I have been stuck in Sheffield for a while because lock 4failed on the flight. Now its repaired and I am stuck at the top of the flight on the lock landing, which is used frequently by the trip boat though thankfully not today. Tomorrow a lot of messing around will see me safe until after new year, when weather, water levels, locks, trees or uncle Tom cobbly and all will no doubt stop me moving again!

The guys on the ground are normally fantastic however some managers do need to learn how to manage and of course money to keep the infrastructure working needs to be made available instead of being wasted on 3 large Christmas parties for the trustees!!!

[IanD]

10 minutes ago, peterboat said:

Totally correct Arthur,  I have been stuck in Sheffield for a while because lock 4failed on the flight. Now its repaired and I am stuck at the top of the flight on the lock landing, which is used frequently by the trip boat though thankfully not today. Tomorrow a lot of messing around will see me safe until after new year, when weather, water levels, locks, trees or uncle Tom cobbly and all will no doubt stop me moving again!

The guys on the ground are normally fantastic however some managers do need to learn how to manage and of course money to keep the infrastructure working needs to be made available instead of being wasted on 3 large Christmas parties for the trustees!!!

Yeah, I'm sure those parties would pay for fixing 1 paddle, or maybe 0.01% of the maintenance backlog... 😞

 

Not excusing the parties, but you're just trying to divert the blame from where it really lies, which as in so many other failing UK infrastructure cases is government policies and funding, especially since 2010. Remind me again, who's been in power since then? 😉

[peterboat]

10 minutes ago, IanD said:

Yeah, I'm sure those parties would pay for fixing 1 paddle, or maybe 0.01% of the maintenance backlog... 😞

 

Not excusing the parties, but you're just trying to divert the blame from where it really lies, which as in so many other failing UK infrastructure cases is government policies and funding, especially since 2010. Remind me again, who's been in power since then? 😉

CRT agreed its funding and its property portfolio for a fixed period, that period isnt over for a few years and has been failing for many years, if fact long before this government came in. I have had 23 years of locks having only one padd9at each end working, lockgates leaking like seives, towpath falling into the canal, the list is endless like the tape that BW and then CRT wrap its failing infrastructure in! 

It's not just the parties its everything, blue signs, logo changes Van's getting  wrapped and then wrapped again because of ch

Changes, it all costs huge amounts of money and its been going on for years!

[IanD]

53 minutes ago, peterboat said:

CRT agreed its funding and its property portfolio for a fixed period, that period isnt over for a few years and has been failing for many years, if fact long before this government came in. I have had 23 years of locks having only one padd9at each end working, lockgates leaking like seives, towpath falling into the canal, the list is endless like the tape that BW and then CRT wrap its failing infrastructure in! 

It's not just the parties its everything, blue signs, logo changes Van's getting  wrapped and then wrapped again because of ch

Changes, it all costs huge amounts of money and its been going on for years!

 

Go on, provide the numbers to show this then... 😉

 

Blue signs and logo changes and parties and van wrapping and executive bonuses and whatever else you can conjure up probably add up to considerably less than 1% of CART expenditure -- and yes that's my estimate, but it's based on some realistic guesstimates of how much these might all actually cost not just "Huge, innit!!!".

 

Yes there's been a shortfall in canal funding and maintenance for a very long time, but both have got steadily worse since CART was set up in 2012, and the Tories have been in power since 2010 -- so they were responsible for the terms under which this happened, which were a triumph in wishful thinking on all sides, both government and CART management at the time... 😞

Edited December 21, 2023 by IanD

[Barneyp]

2 hours ago, magnetman said:

I'm not convinced someone living on a Boat and paying ten grand mooring fee is getting it especially cheap to be fair. 

 

 

If the CRT could access Land Registry by name search then they could cross reference people's circumstances and charge those who own a house and a Boat more than those who only own a Boat. 

 

It seems wrong to be charging people with no other options more but those with other options must surely be valid targets for increased licence fees.

 

In amongst all this of course is the ridiculous price of secondhand Boats. 

 

I remember a previous discussion on this forum about higher licence fees for those who could afford it, but as I remember no one could come up with a way that would actually be fair.

Just because you own a house and live on a boat, doesn't make you rich, the rent from the house might be your only income.

Equally you could live on a boat and not own a house and actually be well off, with a massive income and money in the bank or invested else where.

Even if you there was a way to fairly calculate some ones ability to pay, people will find away round it, eg licence the boat in someone else's name.

Ultimately it's likely any such scheme would cost more to administer than it would raise.

 

[ditchcrawler]

4 hours ago, Barneyp said:

Yes, and the key word is IF, first of all if there was a charge for access then less people would visit, and there would be the costs of administrating and enforcing the payment, which would mean the charge would need to be higher to solve the funding problem, the higher charge would increase the number of people choosing not to visit, meaning a still higher charge, meaning even less people, etc, etc, etc.

 

But it could cost some people over £700 a year, if they walk along the towpath to somewhere every day and then back again. Remember how CRT get there numbers.

[magnetman]

You'd get land owners putting in alternative footpaths and charging people slightly less to use them. 

 

There is obviously an argument for applying charges to cyclists because they are financially gaining from being able to travel faster. 

Time is money. In life I have found that my money has given me lots of time.

 

So yeah. Clobber cyclists. 

 

Another interesting approach could be for the CRT to excavate the towing paths up to the boundary of their land ownership and fill it with water. 

 

Water is what its all about. This would take out the problem of moorings because you would then need neighbouring land owner permission to tie the Boat up. 

 

So what you do is excavate up to 100ft away from locks or movable bridges, lose the towpath completely and lose the contested land problem.

 

 

All that is going on is people wanting to claim the land. Nothing else happening there. 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by magnetman
edited for environmental reasons

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

12 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

But it could cost some people over £700 a year, if they walk along the towpath to somewhere every day and then back again. Remember how CRT get there numbers.

they could apply for a loyalty card and the more miles they walk the more points they get,

and these points could be spent at Morrison’s, on groceries, booze or petrol 👍

[magnetman]

Like air miles? 

 

they could be called cut miles or 'what the heck should we do with this parcel of land' miles. 

 

One could get a nice little LCD Quartz watch with a leatherette strap for nothing !

[Momac]

On 19/12/2023 at 17:04, magnetman said:

The CRT need to be paying people with Boats rather than charging money...............

I sometimes think we should get a fee at a couple of locks  locally where there are usually some spectators.