George Ward evicted.

[IanD]

20 minutes ago, MrsM said:

Not sure I understand this. Do you mean the more someone travels around the system, the more they should pay? We are leisure boaters and are in a marina for about 7 months of the year - for which we pay a large fee - and are out cruising the system for the remaining 5 months. We do not overstay when moored and like to think we do not cause issues for others. Are you suggesting that our contribution should be higher than continual moorers who potentially squat on visitor moorings, litter the towpath and worse? It's a tricky one. I can see the point that we are using much more of the network, which needs to be maintained, but rewarding people for not moving by charging them less would not make the canals a nicer place to be for anyone. Apologies if I have misunderstood (I'm good at doing that).

I think you've understood perfectly -- CMers and those who don't move round the system much think that those who do move round a lot ("real CCers", or whatever you want to call them) should pay more, so that they can pay less. So it would make the canals a nicer place for *them*... 😉

 

Apart from the "what are the canals for?" issue, the problem is that without effective boat tracking/enforcement  and possibly a change to the law -- unlikely since it might need an Act of Parliament -- there's no way for CART to distinguish between "real CCers" and CMers who are abusing the system and increasing in numbers, because neither have a home mooring. And CART have shot themselves in the foot by letting the CMers get established and out of hand in some places like the K&A and London.

 

To try and discourage further growth of CMers -- who are using the canals as a cheap place to live in one area, contrary to the CC rules -- it's possible that CART will apply a "CC surcharge" in future. This won't be popular with the CMers or "real CCers", but presumably would be with those who think that those who use the system more should pay more. Unless of course they get hit too, in which case it won't be... 😉

 

And it will be unfair if CCers suffer because of CMers who break the rules, just like many other areas of life where a selfish minority ruin things for everyone else... 😞

Edited June 12, 2023 by IanD

[MrsM]

15 minutes ago, IanD said:

😉

😉

And it will be unfair if CCers suffer because of CMers who break the rules, just like many other areas of life where a selfish minority ruin things for everyone else... 😞

Agreed - we've met plenty of 'proper' CCers this spring/summer who navigate the system widely (indeed spent the day locking down with one on the T&M) and who should not be penalised. However, we have also spent 4 seasons now passing the same collections of boats sitting on the same short stretches of tow path, often with piles of junk littering the banks. How to differentiate between these 2 very different groups? Doesn't seem very fair.

[magnetman]

31 minutes ago, IanD said:

I think you've understood perfectly -- CMers and those who don't move round the system much think that those who do move round a lot ("real CCers", or whatever you want to call them) should pay more, so that they can pay less. 

😞

 

Be careful with assumptions ! I pay the CRT £12,600 per year. All of this goes to the navigation authority no profiteering middle man as it is a CRT owned residential mooring. 

 

I don't have any interest in someone else paying more so that I can pay less. 

 

I do think the system needs funding so yes costs need to rise.

 

 

You (@IanD) seem to have a very odd view of other people's motivations. 

7 minutes ago, MrsM said:

How to differentiate between these 2 very different groups? Doesn't seem very fair.

You don't need to differentiate. 

 

If you are in the fortunate position of having a house (or a residential mooring) and being able to go boating for long periods of time then you are in a position to pay more. 

 

If you are living on a boat out of straitened circumstances then you can get .gov (Universal Credit) help with licence and mooring fees if applicable IF you can not afford to pay for yourself. 

 

If the licence costs went up then people who genuinely can't afford it can claim. This would result in canals getting state funding which is part of the bigger picture here. 

 

I personally think it is inappropriate for people who have plenty to be taking advantage of the low costs of boating on canals. 

 

Nobody is actually priced out if costs go up. Well maybe a few pleasure boaters here and there they also have houses so boating is an optional extra. 

 

If you can't afford it you don't have it. 

 

I don't have a personal helicopter. 

 

 

Edited June 12, 2023 by magnetman
Autoincorrect

[IanD]

16 minutes ago, MrsM said:

Agreed - we've met plenty of 'proper' CCers this spring/summer who navigate the system widely (indeed spent the day locking down with one on the T&M) and who should not be penalised. However, we have also spent 4 seasons now passing the same collections of boats sitting on the same short stretches of tow path, often with piles of junk littering the banks. How to differentiate between these 2 very different groups? Doesn't seem very fair.

It's not fair -- but to separate them out effectively needs two things, the first is effective boat tracking so CART can tell who are rule-breaking CMers, and the second is a legal way to either charge them more or apply some other penalty to discourage them from breeding further. The first one either needs more staff than CART have or automated GPS boat tracking (which CMers would presumably refuse to install or disable), the second one is difficult without a change to the law which is unlikely to happen.

 

If CART had grasped this particular nettle years ago when the number of CMers started to increase then the situation could have been kept under control, but they've now let so many people get away with it for so long that rule-breaking CMing has become a way of life for many -- not helped by CART giving in to "think of the children" pressure from CMers (backed by the NBTA) and semi-unofficially writing down some recommendations for how people with children at school could stay mostly in one place and still "satisfy the board", in spite of this being specifically excluded by the CC ("no home mooring") rules. They've also failed to crack down on the "towpath squatter"/"towpath junk merchants" like George, who have also increased in numbers as a result.

 

It's like Schrodinger's Boater, where they can simultaneously meet and break the rules until taken to court... 😞

Edited June 12, 2023 by IanD

[Arthur Marshall]

45 minutes ago, MrsM said:

Agreed - we've met plenty of 'proper' CCers this spring/summer who navigate the system widely (indeed spent the day locking down with one on the T&M) and who should not be penalised. However, we have also spent 4 seasons now passing the same collections of boats sitting on the same short stretches of tow path, often with piles of junk littering the banks. How to differentiate between these 2 very different groups? Doesn't seem very fair.

We've been through all this before.

CRT's view is probably that from a leisure moorer, who, if online, moors against the canalside, they get the licence fee and a mooring fee.

From the continuous cruiser, who moors permanently against the canalside, though in different places at various intervals, they get the licence fee.

Both sets of boaters move sometimes and moor sometimes, but CRT only get half the money from continuous cruisers.

That, I think, is the rationale. I have no dog in the fight as I'm happy paying what I do and won't be around much longer. The primary errors were made when BW brought in mooring fees instead of just increasing licences all round, which would have been fairer on everyone (in my opinion)

[magnetman]

Towpath leisure moorings are certainly an interesting phenomenon in all of this.

 

 

[IanD]

12 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

We've been through all this before.

CRT's view is probably that from a leisure moorer, who, if online, moors against the canalside, they get the licence fee and a mooring fee.

From the continuous cruiser, who moors permanently against the canalside, though in different places at various intervals, they get the licence fee.

Both sets of boaters move sometimes and moor sometimes, but CRT only get half the money from continuous cruisers.

That, I think, is the rationale. I have no dog in the fight as I'm happy paying what I do and won't be around much longer. The primary errors were made when BW brought in mooring fees instead of just increasing licences all round, which would have been fairer on everyone (in my opinion)

Weren't the mooring fees brought in to level the playing field with marinas, but with more money going to CART instead of the (private) marina owners?

 

Whatever happens, given CARTs financial position it seems like big rises in the license fees are coming, probably much bigger for some (widebeams, CCers?) than others... 😞

[MrsM]

Obviously I can only speak as a leisure boater who is able to live in a house for the majority of the year, which I appreciate may make my comments a bit empty/distasteful. Is part of the problem not the lack/availability of home moorings? As mentioned, we all know there are those who wish to live on a boat but need to be near a workplace or school, and therefore end up CMing. Why not create more official CRT towpath moorings for them? This way CRT will get the income from the boater if they can afford it or the state if they cannot. Mooring sites are generally much tidier than the random areas of floating townships one passes. Genuine CCers can then continue as they are. Hopelessly simplistic and impractical I'm sure. 

[Victor Vectis]

2 hours ago, Tonka said:

When the Lichfield Link opens then the curly wurly will be busy

Yeahbut......

 

I ain't holding my breath.

[Arthur Marshall]

27 minutes ago, MrsM said:

Obviously I can only speak as a leisure boater who is able to live in a house for the majority of the year, which I appreciate may make my comments a bit empty/distasteful. Is part of the problem not the lack/availability of home moorings? As mentioned, we all know there are those who wish to live on a boat but need to be near a workplace or school, and therefore end up CMing. Why not create more official CRT towpath moorings for them? This way CRT will get the income from the boater if they can afford it or the state if they cannot. Mooring sites are generally much tidier than the random areas of floating townships one passes. Genuine CCers can then continue as they are. Hopelessly simplistic and impractical I'm sure. 

It makes sense to me. There are plenty of CRT towpath moorings around the place. But they aren't technically residential, as that gets into Council Tax and planing permission territory, and that may be a problem. Sortable, though, I'd have thought, if CRT could be bothered.

[David Mack]

3 hours ago, MrsM said:

Not sure I understand this. Do you mean the more someone travels around the system, the more they should pay? We are leisure boaters and are in a marina for about 7 months of the year - for which we pay a large fee - and are out cruising the system for the remaining 5 months. We do not overstay when moored and like to think we do not cause issues for others. Are you suggesting that our contribution should be higher than continual moorers who potentially squat on visitor moorings, litter the towpath and worse? It's a tricky one. I can see the point that we are using much more of the network, which needs to be maintained, but rewarding people that do not have a home mooring for not moving by charging them less would not make the canals a nicer place to be for anyone. Apologies if I have misunderstood (I'm good at doing that).

You've hit the nail on the head!

Whenever I see someone on here suggesting some new arrangement of charging by use (miles travelled and locks passed through) or some sort of local or regional charging rather than a national licence, I ask questions like 'What effect will that have on CRT's income?', 'How much will it cost to administrator?', How will it be enforced?', Why is it better than the current system?' etc. etc. and I never get a sensible response. All too often the promoters of a particular option seem to looking for a solution where somebody else pays more, and they usually completely ignore the vastly increased administrative and enforcement burdens for CRT of a system which is necessarily more complicated than a single national licence.

47 minutes ago, MrsM said:

Is part of the problem not the lack/availability of home moorings?

Is there a lack of home moorings?

When BW set up the current Network Access Agreement regime for marinas some 15-20 years ago it was part of a policy to encourage private operators to provide offline marinas to accommodate the increasing number (and average length) of boats without turning the main routes into endless lines of moored boats. And as part of the policy they planned to remove online moorings locally as offline moorings became available. That latter part of the policy was always unpopular with those who didn't want marina moorings, and proved quite difficult to bring into effect, and seems to have been largely dropped.

But if CRT were to change the licence fee structure to discourage CCers, that would in turn generate more demand for marina moorings, which should encourage the building of more marinas.

[Barneyp]

7 hours ago, MrsM said:

Obviously I can only speak as a leisure boater who is able to live in a house for the majority of the year, which I appreciate may make my comments a bit empty/distasteful. Is part of the problem not the lack/availability of home moorings? As mentioned, we all know there are those who wish to live on a boat but need to be near a workplace or school, and therefore end up CMing. Why not create more official CRT towpath moorings for them? This way CRT will get the income from the boater if they can afford it or the state if they cannot. Mooring sites are generally much tidier than the random areas of floating townships one passes. Genuine CCers can then continue as they are. Hopelessly simplistic and impractical I'm sure. 

CM'ers could pay for a marina mooring, but they don't, so why would they pay for an online mooring when they currently moor for free?

Unless CRT put more money into enforcement things aren’t going to change.

[Mike Adams]

Getting back to George I was not suggesting that anyone who boats more should pay more but it would allow the flexibility for Cart to enforce an additional charge  in areas or at times when there is a possible problem. So if a boat say stays in a particular area for an exceptional time eg more than 14 days without a bone fides mooring then it could automatically incur an additional charge  and that would encourage boats to move on. This is of course a very sad thing to have to do but there seems to be an increasing 'entitlement' culture that says I can live on a boat anywhere I want for as long as I need regardless of the effects on all other users, the environment and operation of the canal. Remember that the public purse contributes a huge amount and subsidies to all us boaters to a lesser or greater extent and it is beholden on all of us not to abuse the system and especially degrade the waterways by our behavior.

[magnetman]

How would applying extra charges work if the person in question isn't licenced in the first place and claims impecuniosity?

 

 

[TheBiscuits]

2 minutes ago, magnetman said:

How would applying extra charges work if the person in question isn't licenced in the first place and claims impecuniosity?

 

 

 

[magnetman]

9 hours ago, David Mack said:

You've hit the nail on the head!

Whenever I see someone on here suggesting some new arrangement of charging by use (miles travelled and locks passed through) or some sort of local or regional charging rather than a national licence, I ask questions like 'What effect will that have on CRT's income?', 'How much will it cost to administrator?', How will it be enforced?', Why is it better than the current system?' etc. etc. and I never get a sensible response. All too often the promoters of a particular option seem to looking for a solution where somebody else pays more, and they usually completely ignore the vastly increased administrative and enforcement burdens for CRT of a system which is necessarily more complicated than a single national licence.

 

I was suggesting charging by use but do not fulfil your criteria because it isn't about 'someone else paying more'. 

 

It is about getting funding for the canals. I personally think it would make a lot of sense for local bodies to run local areas of canal rather than one overall navigation authority running a country wide system. 

 

What is the CRT actually for? Do they fix things or is this job contracted out

 

Is the CRT actually worthwhile or could it be a dinosaur?

 

What about if local councils were to run canals within their municipal areas as if they were local parks? The works and maintenance can be contracted out. This already happens with CRT operated waterways because the hardware has mostly been auctioned off. 

 

There could be more engagement with locals and mooring costs and local tolls could be collected locally to fund the local area. 

 

Probably won't work ! 

 

 

 

 

This a local canal for local people !

[dmr]

Do not let councils run or get involved with canals, they don't understand them, will likely turn them into bland "corporate" civil amenities with all the history and character destroyed, tarmac everywhere, and then neglect them when the political bias of the council changes.

 

And as for "pay by use, thats just daft, the people here proposing this are mostly anti C'mer (anti CCer?) and see making moving more expensive as a way to make boats who don't move enough move more. 😀

[magpie patrick]

9 hours ago, David Mack said:

Is there a lack of home moorings?

 

3 hours ago, Barneyp said:

CM'ers could pay for a marina mooring, but they don't,

 

When we looked at this issue in B&NES area a few years ago there were around 600 boats on the canal and river and precisely zero moorings available for them. 

[MtB]

37 minutes ago, magnetman said:

How would applying extra charges work if the person in question isn't licenced in the first place and claims impecuniosity?

 

 

 

Quite. Even back in 2011 (I think the article was dated) Mr Ward had run up a bill of £78,000 in legal fees at BW/CRT due to his actions and attitude to authority. A debt CRT had no hope of ever collecting from him.

[IanD]

23 minutes ago, dmr said:

Do not let councils run or get involved with canals, they don't understand them, will likely turn them into bland "corporate" civil amenities with all the history and character destroyed, tarmac everywhere, and then neglect them when the political bias of the council changes.

 

And as for "pay by use, thats just daft, the people here proposing this are mostly anti C'mer (anti CCer?) and see making moving more expensive as a way to make boats who don't move enough move more. 😀

I don't think anyone here is saying that a CC surcharge is a *good* idea, but it might be the only way realistically available to CART to stop the proliferation of CMers who just want a cheap way to live in one place (and who don't pay for a mooring) by making it a lot more expensive for them -- and to bring in more money for cash-strapped CART.

 

Any attempt to do this by enforcement/litigation/boat removal is extremely slow and expensive, as this case showed...

Edited June 13, 2023 by IanD

[Arthur Marshall]

15 minutes ago, dmr said:

Do not let councils run or get involved with canals, they don't understand them, will likely turn them into bland "corporate" civil amenities with all the history and character destroyed, tarmac everywhere, and then neglect them when the political bias of the council changes.

 

And as for "pay by use, thats just daft, the people here proposing this are mostly anti C'mer (anti CCer?) and see making moving more expensive as a way to make boats who don't move enough move more. 😀

Councils will be involved in any defined residential mooring increases, which are what are needed in the cities and towns where working boat owners want to live. But I can't see that that's CRT problem - if they just scrapped the "leisure" definition of moorings it would make no different to them, and leave it to councils to deal with council tax or planning rules if they wanted to. As long as they didn't classify them as specifically residential, there probably wouldn't be a planning implication anyway.

CRT need either to monetise the status quo, or enforce the current rules. They can't do the latter, so they might as well go for the money. The problems are with the massed boats in honeypot areas - the few out in the sticks keeping their heads down aren't really a problem. So sell the former cheap moorings (at least to start with) or remove them en masse, without bothering with expensive court orders they don't really need.

[MrsM]

9 hours ago, David Mack said:

Is there a lack of home moorings?

For a large group of people who want to CM I would suggest that yes there is. One of the first things that newbie posters are told is "good luck getting a residential mooring - they are rare as hen's teeth". In my marina there is a waiting list of several years. At the risk of sounding snobbish it is also unlikely that a proportion of the more ramshackle boats I've seen would even be allowed in the marina. I very much doubt it is somewhere they would want to live either. What are they (the CMers) supposed to do? Councils are obliged to find sites for travellers that don't want to travel so why can't we do the same for CMers? Why not create more residential mooring sites where the more 'earthy' CMers can live comfortably, without judgement, without encroaching on visitor moorings and without being under constant pressure to be seen to be moving? Spend the money on providing a facility and turning unacceptable behaviour into something that is acceptable for all sides, rather than in prosecuting them. Quite how and where is another matter altogether.

[MtB]

 

I think billing CMers for CMing could end up creasting 

2 minutes ago, IanD said:

but it might be the only way realistically available to CART to stop the proliferation of CMers who just want a cheap way to live in one place (and who don't pay for a mooring) by making it a lot more expensive for them

 

I was thinking this too. Boating simply has to get more expensive on every level and in every way, or the flight from living on the bank to living on boats by people in dire straits is simply going to continue.

 

And trying to bill Cmers for CMing is likely to create more George Wards, not eliminate them. 

[Bacchus]

I have often thought that Councils could provide the aquatic equivalent of social housing; basic, functional marinas where people could live on boats and pay a small/token/subsidise rent. It can't cost an order of magnitude more to provide and maintain what is essentially a hole in the ground than it does to build and maintain a council estate?

[magnetman]

7 minutes ago, Bacchus said:

I have often thought that Councils could provide the aquatic equivalent of social housing; basic, functional marinas where people could live on boats and pay a small/token/subsidise rent. It can't cost an order of magnitude more to provide and maintain what is essentially a hole in the ground than it does to build and maintain a council estate?

It is a good idea but how would you allocate spaces? There will be demand. 

 

For council housing one must prove local connections and existing residence in the area for a certain amount of time. 

 

If someone were cruising around they do not have local connections. If they are not moving around then they do probably  have local connections but this would mean that there would be an incentive for not moving. 

 

Maybe it could be how long you have lived on the boat ie a boating connection. 

Difficult to prove. 

 

Council housing in high value and high population areas is massively over subscribed. In Tower Hamlets it is about ten applicants per unit. Too many people.