George Ward evicted.

[MtB]

Just now, dmr said:

 

Let it be known that CRT are going to do a major crackdown on rule breaking boats unless things improve then peer group pressure (his supporters) might realise that George is doing harm to all boaters and stop supporting him/help him to behave. Trouble is NBTA would mount a good campaign and this tactic only works if CRT have the will and resources to follow it through. 

Met another boater today (a proper boater, not a moaning type) who said the K&A is now not a good place.

 

I can imagine this. 

 

There is a rather lovely small Dutch sailing barge moored here on the 48 hour VMs. I first noticed it here in about April (IIRC). 

 

Recently they moved up to the prime spot right by the bridge, where they have been for about a week now. 

 

Also I notice the other CMers here tending to move really short distances, like a couple of hundred yards a month. Not sure what that's all about. 

 

 

 

[David Mack]

52 minutes ago, MtB said:

Also I notice the other CMers here tending to move really short distances, like a couple of hundred yards a month. Not sure what that's all about. 

Possibly a shortage of people willing to take on the role of bankside enforcement officer after one of their number was murdered by a boater?

[magnetman]

1 hour ago, dmr said:

 

Let it be known that CRT are going to do a major crackdown on rule breaking boats unless things improve then peer group pressure (his supporters) might realise that George is doing harm to all boaters and stop supporting him/help him to behave. Trouble is NBTA would mount a good campaign and this tactic only works if CRT have the will and resources to follow it through. 

Met another boater today (a proper boater, not a moaning type) who said the K&A is now not a good place.

 

At some point the option of closing the K&A is going to be on the table I reckon. 

 

Over time these things will get looked at and people taking advantage of a lack of enforcement and paying nothing in will hasten this outcome. 

 

Obviously there are a lot of squatters on the cut now and they are quite political but they are going to wreck the place. 

 

 

 

 

[MtB]

3 minutes ago, magnetman said:

 

At some point the option of closing the K&A is going to be on the table I reckon. 

 

Over time these things will get looked at and people taking advantage of a lack of enforcement and paying nothing in will hasten this outcome. 

 

Obviously there are a lot of squatters on the cut now and they are quite political but they are going to wreck the place. 

 

 

"Close" the K&A as in stop boats from navigating?

 

Won't that suit the NBTA contingent perfectly at the expense of genuine canal users? 

 

 

 

 

[dmr]

Just now, magnetman said:

 

At some point the option of closing the K&A is going to be on the table I reckon. 

 

Over time these things will get looked at and people taking advantage of a lack of enforcement and paying nothing in will hasten this outcome. 

 

Obviously there are a lot of squatters on the cut now and they are quite political but they are going to wreck the place. 

 

 

 

 

 

There are a lot of hire boats, a lot of leisure boats in marinas, and it was a big restoration, so I am not sure that closing it is an option, but it does sound like it has gone wrong. I suspect that, like with a bad housing estate, once the percentage of rule breakers exceeds some (quite small) figure then rule breaking becomes the norm and newcomers do the same as its the norm and they have known nothing else. I dunno what CRT can do about this. Maybe thats why they have just done the mooring review in Birmingham? Really have to get these things sorted before they get out of hand.

 

Both myself and a CRT bloke had to tell a passing boater today that as there is a failed lock it really would be ok to spend more than 2 days on a 2 day mooring. Most boaters do obey the rules. 😀

[magnetman]

4 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

 

"Close" the K&A as in stop boats from navigating?

 

Won't that suit the NBTA contingent perfectly at the expense of genuine canal users? 

 

 

 

 

 

I was thinking about the option of transferring the canal to remainder waterway and withdrawing maintenance. 

 

It (K&A) was closed before probably for good reasons. 

 

I'm not sure what obligations the CRT would have to businesses which rely on the existence of a navigable waterway. Perhaps there is some clause in the contracts saying the canal must be adequately maintained. 

 

 

 

 

[ditchcrawler]

5 minutes ago, dmr said:

 

There are a lot of hire boats, a lot of leisure boats in marinas, and it was a big restoration, so I am not sure that closing it is an option, but it does sound like it has gone wrong. I suspect that, like with a bad housing estate, once the percentage of rule breakers exceeds some (quite small) figure then rule breaking becomes the norm and newcomers do the same as its the norm and they have known nothing else. I dunno what CRT can do about this. Maybe thats why they have just done the mooring review in Birmingham? Really have to get these things sorted before they get out of hand.

 

Both myself and a CRT bloke had to tell a passing boater today that as there is a failed lock it really would be ok to spend more than 2 days on a 2 day mooring. Most boaters do obey the rules. 😀

You only need to see the number of posts on Facebook saying I am buying a boat and will be CCing what is the minimum distance I have to move. The K&A has been a problem with lots of CC'ers not moving as they should for years, it wasnt until 2014 that they started to try to address the problem, by then it was a way of life for many.

[Barneyp]

2 hours ago, MtB said:

 

 

So far, the ideas put forward for dealing with the Mr Ward situation are as follows.

 

1) Leave him be, let him carry on living on a boat and CMing on the towpath rent/license-free

2) Serve an injunction banning him from CRT property (the preferred CRT solution) and hope he complies

3) Imprison him in a secure hospital

4) Make him accept (somehow) 'homeless person' accommodation from the local authority

 

 

Any other solutions? 

 

 

Options 3 and 4 are not possible without major changes to the law and significant funding increases from central government.

 

CRT seem to have decided they are going to use every means available to them to get him off the canal and towpath, hopefully this is not just an isolated case and they will take tougher and faster action against all those who regularly flout the rules.

 

If CRT do go down this route there maybe a change in attitude and a general improvement in behaviour, but I imagine there are many who will not be able to comply with the CC guidance because either their boat is not up to it and they don't have the ability or funds to fix it, or they themselves are not physically capable of navigating the required distance, or they need to stay in the same area for some reason e.g. work, school, childcare. And many of these people will not have the funds or any other resources to enable them to live else where so there are potentially many more George Ward's in the making and it will take a long time and a lot of money to move them all off the canals.

 

I'm not sure CRT have the resources to remove all the offenders, but if they don't leisure boaters and legitimate CC'ers will not want to stay on the canals and will stop buying leisure licences,  and the general public will not support central government in funding CRT, so somehow CRT have to change the behaviour of the CMers or they will lose a lot of money.

 

[Tony Brooks]

2 minutes ago, Barneyp said:

'm not sure CRT have the resources to remove all the offenders, but if they don't leisure boaters and legitimate CC'ers will not want to stay on the canals and will stop buying leisure licences,

 

To a degree that was one of the reasons we sold the boat when we did rather than soldier on for a few more years. The lack of adequate movement tracking leading to accusations from CaRT that we had overstayed, the minimum return time banning that in effect meant you could only moor there, as a private boat, either on the way to Oxford or on the way back, never in both directions to pick up supplies. Then the encroachment of what looks like car parking outfits overseeing CaRT moorings and the lack of casual mooring in convenient spots because of CMers. It is already happening.

[magnetman]

I don't think it is an exaggeration to say these people are putting the future of the canals at risk.

 

It seems a bit of a negative way of looking at it but given how much it costs the navigation authority to deal with these issues this could be a very serious problem.

 

 

i don't know how true newspaper articles arrr and they often have some sort of poetic licence but if there is any truth in this story below then this geyser under discussion could have been pensioned off by CRT money.

 

 

This was ten yars ago.

 

 

Something wrong here.

 

 

https://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/10625333.trust-attempts-to-recover-76k-from-man/

[GUMPY]

3 hours ago, MtB said:

Any other solutions? 

Public flogging or a public  execution to discourage the others sounds good to me 😱

[Jon57]

3 hours ago, MtB said:

 

 

So far, the ideas put forward for dealing with the Mr Ward situation are as follows.

 

1) Leave him be, let him carry on living on a boat and CMing on the towpath rent/license-free

2) Serve an injunction banning him from CRT property (the preferred CRT solution) and hope he complies

3) Imprison him in a secure hospital

4) Make him accept (somehow) 'homeless person' accommodation from the local authority

 

 

Any other solutions? 

 

 

Crt volanteer 🤔

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

Just now, Jon57 said:

Crt volanteer 🤔

I said long ago he should be given a blue shirt and job as a Towpath Fundraiser. 
 

[MtB]

5 hours ago, magnetman said:

I don't think it is an exaggeration to say these people are putting the future of the canals at risk.

 

It seems a bit of a negative way of looking at it but given how much it costs the navigation authority to deal with these issues this could be a very serious problem.

 

 

i don't know how true newspaper articles arrr and they often have some sort of poetic licence but if there is any truth in this story below then this geyser under discussion could have been pensioned off by CRT money.

 

 

This was ten yars ago.

 

 

Something wrong here.

 

 

https://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk/news/10625333.trust-attempts-to-recover-76k-from-man/

 

 

The article you link to gives some perspective to all this. It reads as though it could have been published just a few weeks ago not in August 2013, by which time Mr Ward had been taking the piss for long enough for BW/CRT to have run already up a legal bill of £76k trying to persuade him to follow the rules. Given the snail's pace at which their legal team operates, this had probably already taken them about a decade to get to that stage, which takes us back to 2003. 

 

I notice there is one public comment attached to the article (and copied below) which seems very generous-spirited, but rather naïve in the light of what has happened in the intervening ten years. I wonder if the poster still feels the same. 

 

 

"I think that the outstanding problem should be rethought for the following reasons. This is my personal viewpoint:

 

There is no chance what-so-ever of recovering a large legal fee of several thousands of UK pounds, that BW and/or CRT incurred.

 

George Ward only has his Floating Water Home and nowhere else to go.

 

If I was in a position within C&RT, I would have compassion for him as a person, who for no fault of his own, had a work's accident, rendering him disabled and probably unable to work again.

 

My action would be to have a face to face meeting with this man, with a view to drawing a line under the whole business, (No more further legal expenses for C&RT) and agree, with a hand-shake, (Like the Olden Days), and start afresh, allowing him to purchase a licence and stay legal, with his only home and possessions on the canal system, on the understanding that he abides by the general rules and regulations that we all, as boaters, agree to.

 

This would be a kind and compassionate action, hopefully welcomed by each and every boater on the canal system, (As well as Mr. Ward), knowing that this is a special case and not the norm.

 

Now who could object to finalising a problem such as this, taking into all the known facts stated above? There may well be other reasons that have not been put into the open that I am not privy to; this could alter the situation but I would be delighted if someone would be human towards this unfortunate individual and have a look at the situation, with a view to being positive.

 

C&RT Executive staff, please do give this consideration - Please?"

[Mike Adams]

What Cart should do is transfer the waterway to an independent trust who would not be bound by all the constraints that seem to stop Cart doing anything about the waterway. They could the set their own rules and regulations. You don't find any problems discussed above with waterways like the Basingstoke, Wey and River Avon.

No Mooring, No Licence no problem!

[Ianws]

 

2 hours ago, MtB said:

 

 

The article you link to gives some perspective to all this. It reads as though it could have been published just a few weeks ago not in August 2013, by which time Mr Ward had been taking the piss for long enough for BW/CRT to have run already up a legal bill of £76k trying to persuade him to follow the rules. Given the snail's pace at which their legal team operates, this had probably already taken them about a decade to get to that stage, which takes us back to 2003. 

 

I notice there is one public comment attached to the article (and copied below) which seems very generous-spirited, but rather naïve in the light of what has happened in the intervening ten years. I wonder if the poster still feels the same. 

 

 

"I think that the outstanding problem should be rethought for the following reasons. This is my personal viewpoint:

 

There is no chance what-so-ever of recovering a large legal fee of several thousands of UK pounds, that BW and/or CRT incurred.

 

George Ward only has his Floating Water Home and nowhere else to go.

 

If I was in a position within C&RT, I would have compassion for him as a person, who for no fault of his own, had a work's accident, rendering him disabled and probably unable to work again.

 

My action would be to have a face to face meeting with this man, with a view to drawing a line under the whole business, (No more further legal expenses for C&RT) and agree, with a hand-shake, (Like the Olden Days), and start afresh, allowing him to purchase a licence and stay legal, with his only home and possessions on the canal system, on the understanding that he abides by the general rules and regulations that we all, as boaters, agree to.

 

This would be a kind and compassionate action, hopefully welcomed by each and every boater on the canal system, (As well as Mr. Ward), knowing that this is a special case and not the norm.

 

Now who could object to finalising a problem such as this, taking into all the known facts stated above? There may well be other reasons that have not been put into the open that I am not privy to; this could alter the situation but I would be delighted if someone would be human towards this unfortunate individual and have a look at the situation, with a view to being positive.

 

C&RT Executive staff, please do give this consideration - 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 9, 2023 by Ianws

[David Mack]

1 hour ago, Mike Adams said:

What Cart should do is transfer the waterway to an independent trust who would not be bound by all the constraints that seem to stop Cart doing anything about the waterway. They could the set their own rules and regulations. You don't find any problems discussed above with waterways like the Basingstoke, Wey and River Avon.

No Mooring, No Licence no problem!

None of those waterways have a continuous cruising option. You either get a short term visitor licence and then leave the waterway, or for a long term licence you have to have a permanent mooring.

[Arthur Marshall]

1 hour ago, Mike Adams said:

What Cart should do is transfer the waterway to an independent trust who would not be bound by all the constraints that seem to stop Cart doing anything about the waterway. They could the set their own rules and regulations. You don't find any problems discussed above with waterways like the Basingstoke, Wey and River Avon.

No Mooring, No Licence no problem!

What stops CRT doing stuff is lack of money and therefore personnel.

Policing rules is manageable only with the consent of the policed - once that consent is withdrawn, as it has been by a considerable number or rule-benders and breakers, there is nothing an authority can do about it. A new authority would make no difference. What we've got is a new status quo, with probably as many people gaming the system as paying their dues.

I notified CRT last week about an abandoned boat floating free on the staffs & worcs. I got a phone call yesterday from a bloke who knew nothing about it (though apparently it's been reported time and again for months) and whose only suggestion was he'd try to contact the owner. When I asked how he was going to do that with no boat name, number or licence, he waffled a bit and hung up. It's a step up from dumping a shopping trolley in the cut, but there it is. That's what boaters do now.

 

[MtB]

34 minutes ago, David Mack said:

None of those waterways have a continuous cruising option. You either get a short term visitor licence and then leave the waterway, or for a long term licence you have to have a permanent mooring.

 

 

Exactly. This IS the solution.

 

As Mike Adams points out, it has been shown to work perfectly on other waterways. 

 

No CC option = no piss-taking CMers like Mr Ward. Problem solved. 

 

 

[Barneyp]

50 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

 

Exactly. This IS the solution.

 

As Mike Adams points out, it has been shown to work perfectly on other waterways. 

 

No CC option = no piss-taking CMers like Mr Ward. Problem solved. 

 

 

So it's not about changing the navigation authority, but changing the law which needs an Act of Parliament.

And as Arthur has said, whoever is the navigation authority need the resources to enforce the rules.

Edited June 9, 2023 by Barneyp

[magnetman]

11 hours ago, Mike Adams said:

What Cart should do is transfer the waterway to an independent trust who would not be bound by all the constraints that seem to stop Cart doing anything about the waterway. They could the set their own rules and regulations. You don't find any problems discussed above with waterways like the Basingstoke, Wey and River Avon.

No Mooring, No Licence no problem!

 

Yes the River Wey is very nice. So I believe is the Chelmer and Blackwater which is run by the IWA. 

 

However there is one obvious difference which is that these are small individual navigations which as far as I know have never had mass towpath squatter problems. CRT manages a huge network which now has a significant and growing towpath squatter problem. 

 

One does wonder what would happen if say half a dozen narrow boats took a week visitor licence on the Wey and camped up somewhere and just refused to leave. 

 

What have the National Trust got that the CRT are lacking? 

 

Is it legislation or have NT got proper security guys who deal with things and you just don't mess with them. 

 

If it is legislation then could the CRT canals be transferred to NT perhaps. They do look after a lot of heritage sites around the country. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Tony Brooks]

16 minutes ago, magnetman said:

One does wonder what would happen if say half a dozen narrow boats took a week visitor licence on the Wey and camped up somewhere and just refused to leave. 

 

I believe that the NT on the Wey have short time limits that visiting boats are supposed to stay in one spot (24 hours I think), but when we were on there we stayed at Godalming for a few days and no action was taken, likewise just upstream of Guildford because of an appointment back home. I suspect that because of the need for a visitor's license at Thames Lock where your particulars are taken, they only tend get the responsible boaters who do not take the micky.

[Mike Adams]

44 minutes ago, magnetman said:

One does wonder what would happen if say half a dozen narrow boats took a week visitor licence on the Wey and camped up somewhere and just refused to leave. 

 

The NT have a way of sniffing out 'doggy boaters'. I once came across one who thought he would cc at Guildford. I met him on the way up and he was gone in a couple of days. When you get a licence it says you will allow NT to move a boat if required so they would just move it either off the waterway or to somewhere where you can't get to it.

The advantage of smaller waterways is that they know where everyone is all the time because they have many more staff on the ground.

[magnetman]

37 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

I believe that the NT on the Wey have short time limits that visiting boats are supposed to stay in one spot (24 hours I think), but when we were on there we stayed at Godalming for a few days and no action was taken, likewise just upstream of Guildford because of an appointment back home. I suspect that because of the need for a visitor's license at Thames Lock where your particulars are taken, they only tend get the responsible boaters who do not take the micky.

 

There are loads of problem boats down that end of the River. Elmbridge is currently trying to acquire a PSPO to get rid of them.

 

I wonder if the lock keepers at Thames lock on the Wey occasionally refuse to sell visitor licences to boats which seem too likely to cause a problem.

 

I'm sure if they did nothing a small slum area could easily develop somewhere along their navigations.

 

As Mike Adams points out above you agree they can move your boat so I guess that is what they do.

 

And yes staff on the ground does help enormously.

 

 

8 minutes ago, Mike Adams said:

The NT have a way of sniffing out 'doggy boaters'. I once came across one who thought he would cc at Guildford. I met him on the way up and he was gone in a couple of days. When you get a licence it says you will allow NT to move a boat if required so they would just move it either off the waterway or to somewhere where you can't get to it.

The advantage of smaller waterways is that they know where everyone is all the time because they have many more staff on the ground.

 

There is an argument for breaking up the CRT network into local areas which would be managed as individual regions. You could have tolls. I'm sure there would be no shortage of volunteer workforce to help ensure compliance and keep 'their patch' nice and tidy.

 

If you engage locals and give them some control over what happens things could improve.

 

Maybe this is too simplistic but it seems a bit wrong having one navigation authority for such a large network with some many different user types.

 

 

Of course this would mean costs would rise for some people but that is going to have to happen anyway isn't it.

 

 

It doesn't seem right that people who have zero interest or connection to an area can simply use it as a cheap place to live briefly then disappear. There should be something coming from them. Either voluntary work to make the place better or payment of a toll to use a service ie a functioning waterway.

 

 

 

Edited June 10, 2023 by magnetman

[Tracy D'arth]

Enforcement on the Bridgewater seems to work much better than CRT achieve.