Licences

[Mike Todd]

5 hours ago, Snakey said:

But that seems to be subject to CRT 'interpretation' too. When we bought our current boat (in 2009) we also secured a CRT linear mooring (Nantwich embankment) by auction.  Then we went cruising. Five years later we received a letter from CRT to the effect that according to their records we had not used our mooring for 'at least 3 years' and as our pattern  of movement entitled us to re-licence  as a continuous cruiser, and therefore would we please release the mooring for others to use. So it seems that you must actually use the mooring if you have one.

At the time, those moorings were well sought but a review just a few years ago identified that they were often going unuse as demand had gone elsewhere.

 

Since, as described, CaRT were only inviting a voluntary withdrawal I cannot see how this could ever be construed as ultra vires - they do have a duty to manage the waterways. In any case, as said, the moorings are not for life. In the case of those auctioned, I thought that they only bought you a mooring fow a certain number of years. At the end of it, handing it back is automatic anyway.

 

Depending on the way in which the CC surcharge ultimately pans out, it is probably good that CaRT did not press their request further as what might then have been an advantage may well be a disadvantage!

[magnetman]

Just now, Mike Todd said:

At In the case of those auctioned, I thought that they only bought you a mooring fow a certain number of years. At the end of it, handing it back is automatic anyway.

 

 

This is incorrect. 

 

After the 3 yar initial bid-for price the mooring cost will revert to the 'local rate' and the occupier of the mooring has first refusal on renewal. 

 

The idea that the mooring is re-auctioned is a common misunderstanding..

 

 

 

The reason I know this is I have a BW auctioned mooring and there has never been any suggestion of letting it to anyone else. After the first three yars the price went down but then the 'local rate' went up because of the silly prices achieved at auction for a hens teeth mooring ! 

[Snakey]

I'll just throw in, 60ft mooring a stone's chuck from Natwich town centre, bid and won for £950 (only bidder) in Sept 2009, last renewal £1300 in 2014. Seems a snip now...

[StevieN]

11 minutes ago, Snakey said:

I'll just throw in, 60ft mooring a stone's chuck from Natwich town centre, bid and won for £950 (only bidder) in Sept 2009, last renewal £1300 in 2014. Seems a snip now...

That sounds like a bargain! Be interesting to know what it is now.

How often do moorings like these come up for auction?

[Momac]

2 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

The legal right to moor for 14 days, as stated in the Acts, only applies to CCers. CRT have included this in the T&Cs (as I indicated) to include all boaters, and of course you agree to this every time you get your licence. This is relatively recent, and I don't think would have applied when Snakey was cruising in 2014, though I admit I can't remember when the change came. And, anyway, as its only in the T&Cs, CRT could withdraw the concession at any time for home moorers - which they can't for CCers. Not that there's any reason they should.

The act says this

The 14 day rule  not a right to stay 14 days .

The 14 day rule is a limit of 14 days imposed on boats without a mooring (or longer if it is reasonable in the circumstances)

The 14 day restriction is not applied  to boats that do have a home mooring. 

However C&RT have in their terms and conditions imposed  the 14 day restriction on boats with a home mooring. 

[magnetman]

I seem to recall Nigel Moore went into it in detail (as he was wont to do and congratulated by a judge for doing) and concluded that boats with moorings can't stop for 14 days. 

 

Another immediately available interpretation is that they can stop for however long they like but I think there is some previous legislation to prevent this.

 

I will probably be something like 24 hours. 

 

Not sure if there is anyone still around who goes quite as deep as Nigel did into the laws governing the inland waterways. 

[Paul C]

28 minutes ago, magnetman said:

I seem to recall Nigel Moore went into it in detail (as he was wont to do and congratulated by a judge for doing) and concluded that boats with moorings can't stop for 14 days. 

 

Another immediately available interpretation is that they can stop for however long they like but I think there is some previous legislation to prevent this.

 

I will probably be something like 24 hours. 

 

Not sure if there is anyone still around who goes quite as deep as Nigel did into the laws governing the inland waterways. 

 

Yeah but it doesn't mean he's right. Its never been tested in court. 

 

The 14 days is ONLY the length of time beyond which, CRT can cite that alone as a reason not to issue a CC licence. The actual time you can moor on the towpath of a canal is defined in the T&Cs and/or local signage. 

[Alan de Enfield]

1 hour ago, magnetman said:

I seem to recall Nigel Moore went into it in detail (as he was wont to do and congratulated by a judge for doing) and concluded that boats with moorings can't stop for 14 days. 

 

Another immediately available interpretation is that they can stop for however long they like but I think there is some previous legislation to prevent this.

 

I will probably be something like 24 hours. 

 

Not sure if there is anyone still around who goes quite as deep as Nigel did into the laws governing the inland waterways. 

 

 

Nigel Moore : Home Moorers Have NO 14 Day Mooring Rights (Only Permissive)

 

As I construe the various Acts, they DO have the force of law behind them.

 

It cannot properly be said that the 1995 Act “exactly . . .says” that “if you have a home mooring you can stay anywhere on the towpath for as long as you want then and never need to move.” It is true that “ ‘move every 14 days’ is explicitly only detailed in the act for those with no home mooring”, but that does not imply absence of restriction for those with home moorings.

 

From the very first enabling Acts, the towpath was not to be obstructed; it had to be available to all for the use it was designed for – accordingly, overnight stays would have been the only (perhaps) tolerated use for mooring. In one of the major canal company’s Acts, in fact, pleasure boats were even banned from ANY use of the towpath (and that clause has never, to my knowledge, been explicitly rescinded).

 

Over the latter part of the 20th century, longer temporary use of the towpath for mooring became tolerated on a pragmatic basis, with 14 days fixed upon as a rough guideline for reasons lost in obscurity (for all that BW came up with postulated origins during the Select Committee hearings on the 1990 Bill).

 

Obstruction remains on the statute books as an offence, updated even in the 1995 Act, and overstaying stated times on selected sections has been used with County Court approval to qualify the boat – being thereby regarded as an obstruction - for being moved under s.8(5) of the 1983 Act. Anything longer than an overnight stay, as I see it, is simply permissive – with the exception of boats without home moorings, for whom only, the right to 14 days (or more if circumstances dictate) is enshrined in law.

 

For boats with home moorings when cruising away from those, the 14 day limit would apply only as a permissive one based on a fair-play comparison with the ‘continuous cruisers’. It is simply, in other words, that CaRT would find difficulty in justifying the application of differing standards based only on the nature of the boat licence application.

[Paul C]

Was Nigel one of these who never accepted s.43 of the 1962 Transport Act applied? I think so..... https://kanda.boatingcommunity.org.uk/section-43-of-the-1962-waterways-act-its-use-and-abuse/

[Arthur Marshall]

1 hour ago, MartynG said:

The act says this

The 14 day rule  not a right to stay 14 days .

The 14 day rule is a limit of 14 days imposed on boats without a mooring (or longer if it is reasonable in the circumstances)

The 14 day restriction is not applied  to boats that do have a home mooring. 

However C&RT have in their terms and conditions imposed  the 14 day restriction on boats with a home mooring. 

The point surely is that home moorers do not, under the terms of the Acts, have the right to stay for any length of time at all on the towpath. The assumption made at the time was that anyone with a mooring was a commercial craft and would therefore be moving every day in the nature of their work. There wasn't any expectation that a whole host of holidaying blokes would suddenly clog the towpath up. It was a concession that they were allowed to play out and moor up for any length of time at all.

It's all moot anyway, and not really worth arguing about, like most of this stuff - it's just a bit interesting. It was a sensible decision by CRT to equate the rules between CCers and moorers, though greeted with howls of outrage by moorers at the time, especially those who thought they'd found a loophole that let them stay in a two mile radius for as long as they liked, or who didn't want to move at all, like Mayers, whose case is probably the ultimate not only in self destruction, but in forcing CRT to change the T&Cs to what certainly appeared to the outraged to be to their disadvantage. I suspect in reality it's made very little difference to anyone.

[Mike Todd]

4 hours ago, magnetman said:

This is incorrect. 

 

After the 3 yar initial bid-for price the mooring cost will revert to the 'local rate' and the occupier of the mooring has first refusal on renewal. 

 

The idea that the mooring is re-auctioned is a common misunderstanding..

 

 

 

The reason I know this is I have a BW auctioned mooring and there has never been any suggestion of letting it to anyone else. After the first three yars the price went down but then the 'local rate' went up because of the silly prices achieved at auction for a hens teeth mooring ! 

Fair enough, you have direct experience. I read the T&C's as saying that CaRT would normally offer it to the current moorer at the end of the auctioned period but it does not indicate that as a right.

[Paul C]

Licence holders have a right to moor, because the licence effectively grants them the right to "use the canal", and a sensible interpretation of that is it involves mooring overnight - what the Peel Holdings (Bridgewater Canal) quite accurately label as a "transit mooring". So I think its safe to assume overnight is okay. 

 

Anything more than overnight..........you'd need to have something else to grip onto. Signage is pretty good to. The 1995 Act....not so much, its a bit of a leap of interpretation to say 14 days comes from there. The T&Cs.....probably more so than the 1995 .

[Momac]

9 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

The point surely is that home moorers do not, under the terms of the Acts, have the right to stay for any length of time at all on the towpath.

The point is that no one has any rights but there are restrictions.

In this country we tend not so much to have rights and you can do as you like unless otherwise restricted. 

 

[BilgePump]

12 hours ago, Mike Todd said:

Fair enough, you have direct experience. I read the T&C's as saying that CaRT would normally offer it to the current moorer at the end of the auctioned period but it does not indicate that as a right.

My mooring that I initially got on a three year contract at auction just renewed last month. They sent me a renewal for the coming year with the new direct debit schedule (price has gone up by 18%). It renewed automatically; I would have needed to tell them that I didn't want it anymore for them to cancel it. There's not even a boat registered on it at the moment. They just renewed with 'TBC' in place of boat name/licence.

16 hours ago, StevieN said:

That sounds like a bargain! Be interesting to know what it is now.

How often do moorings like these come up for auction?

I imagine that a 60' mooring there would be a good bit more now. There's currently one mooring on the embankment listed for £1,112 pa, for max 32'10" boat. Going off price per foot that would make 60' just around £2k. There are currently 23 moorings up for auction on the website, with another 100 on buy now. https://www.watersidemooring.com/Search?Location=marple&DistanceMiles=0&Coordinates=53.3973%2C-2.0617&Availability=AvailableNow&ListingType=Auction

[StevieN]

1 hour ago, BilgePump said:

My mooring that I initially got on a three year contract at auction just renewed last month. They sent me a renewal for the coming year with the new direct debit schedule (price has gone up by 18%). It renewed automatically; I would have needed to tell them that I didn't want it anymore for them to cancel it. There's not even a boat registered on it at the moment. They just renewed with 'TBC' in place of boat name/licence.

I imagine that a 60' mooring there would be a good bit more now. There's currently one mooring on the embankment listed for £1,112 pa, for max 32'10" boat. Going off price per foot that would make 60' just around £2k. There are currently 23 moorings up for auction on the website, with another 100 on buy now. https://www.watersidemooring.com/Search?Location=marple&DistanceMiles=0&Coordinates=53.3973%2C-2.0617&Availability=AvailableNow&ListingType=Auction

That's interesting. Thank you for sharing @BilgePump I've bookmarked that page for future reference 👍

[Mike Todd]

1 hour ago, BilgePump said:

My mooring that I initially got on a three year contract at auction just renewed last month. They sent me a renewal for the coming year with the new direct debit schedule (price has gone up by 18%). It renewed automatically; I would have needed to tell them that I didn't want it anymore for them to cancel it. There's not even a boat registered on it at the moment. They just renewed with 'TBC' in place of boat name/licence.

I imagine that a 60' mooring there would be a good bit more now. There's currently one mooring on the embankment listed for £1,112 pa, for max 32'10" boat. Going off price per foot that would make 60' just around £2k. There are currently 23 moorings up for auction on the website, with another 100 on buy now. https://www.watersidemooring.com/Search?Location=marple&DistanceMiles=0&Coordinates=53.3973%2C-2.0617&Availability=AvailableNow&ListingType=Auction

That's good. I do vaguely recall a case mentioned on this forum some years back when such automatic renewal did not occur and someone lost out on an auction. Seems that CaRT have improved their system.

 

A few years back they reduced (IIRC!) the long term moorings at the south side of Nantwich aqueduct and converted to VM (limited stay?) on the grounds that there was not demand and boaters were frustrated at seeing a lot of unused space (could have been lots of people out boating - whatever next!) when there was nowhere available to stop overnight or even go into town for supplies.

 

It does seem to me that in some parts of the system we have visited (almost all of it) that the demand for Waterside Moorings with limited facilities does ebb and flow quite a bit - wonder how this is reflected in the auction process to assess local pricing? It cannot be sensible to use local marina prices as a reserve price if at that level the towpath moorings don't sell.

[BilgePump]

2 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

That's good. I do vaguely recall a case mentioned on this forum some years back when such automatic renewal did not occur and someone lost out on an auction. Seems that CaRT have improved their system.

 

A few years back they reduced (IIRC!) the long term moorings at the south side of Nantwich aqueduct and converted to VM (limited stay?) on the grounds that there was not demand and boaters were frustrated at seeing a lot of unused space (could have been lots of people out boating - whatever next!) when there was nowhere available to stop overnight or even go into town for supplies.

 

It does seem to me that in some parts of the system we have visited (almost all of it) that the demand for Waterside Moorings with limited facilities does ebb and flow quite a bit - wonder how this is reflected in the auction process to assess local pricing? It cannot be sensible to use local marina prices as a reserve price if at that level the towpath moorings don't sell.

Just to clarify, the mooring that I got via auction isn't in Nantwich, it's further north.

I had a mooring at Nantwich for a year or so about 2019 but never really used it. Seemed good value for money but just a bit too far away from home and where I wanted to be using the boat. I was another one of those absent boaters. Got a second CaRT mooring on the Macc when a decent shortish spot came up on buy now. Auction one is different location again.

As for demand, being in commuter distance of Manchester, waterside moorings around here seem to be released regularly but are then taken up quite swiftly. No moorings currently listed within 20 miles of Marple, but they do come up. It's easy enough to register an interest in certain locations and get email/SMS alerts when something is available. 

 

[Alan de Enfield]

28 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

It does seem to me that in some parts of the system we have visited (almost all of it) that the demand for Waterside Moorings with limited facilities does ebb and flow quite a bit - wonder how this is reflected in the auction process to assess local pricing? It cannot be sensible to use local marina prices as a reserve price if at that level the towpath moorings don't sell.

 

 

The 'problem' is that c&RT cannot (I believe legally) use their dominant position in the market to undercut competitors pricing.

 

Somewhere I have a copy of a C&RT Document explaining how & why they set their mooring prices as they do. They also do a detailed analysis of competitors moorings and compare facilities and prices.

 

I'll see if I can find it.

[Arthur Marshall]

37 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

 

The 'problem' is that c&RT cannot (I believe legally) use their dominant position in the market to undercut competitors pricing.

 

Somewhere I have a copy of a C&RT Document explaining how & why they set their mooring prices as they do. They also do a detailed analysis of competitors moorings and compare facilities and prices.

 

I'll see if I can find it.

I still think it's amazing that , having checked their competitors' prices so carefully for equivalent moorings to mine, they set their rates at about four times what I pay. Not exactly undercutting, and not exactly competitive, either.

I think they just make it up.

[BilgePump]

2 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

I still think it's amazing that , having checked their competitors' prices so carefully for equivalent moorings to mine, they set their rates at about four times what I pay. Not exactly undercutting, and not exactly competitive, either.

I think they just make it up.

Not sure what you're paying Arthur but CaRT moorings aren't bad value. Mine work out at £2.7/ft/month and £3.3/ft/month. No facilities and online. Local marinas are a heck of a lot more

 

Edited October 25, 2023 by BilgePump
got pounds and pence mixed up

[IanD]

2 hours ago, BilgePump said:

Not sure what you're paying Arthur but CaRT moorings aren't bad value. Mine work out at £2.7/ft/month and £3.3/ft/month. No facilities and online. Local marinas are a heck of a lot more

 

My marina is £4/ft/month, with power and water and parking.

[Paul C]

A few years back, paid £1.85/ft/month for a basic online mooring (towpath side, so not even vaguely secure, no services but you could go up the line for water or thru 2 locks for pump out/diesel/gas). Contrast with today, £4.30/ft/month - fully serviced, offline marina.

[magnetman]

Why do people not put two decimals after the money number?

 

Maybe I am the only one who thinks £2.7 should be £2.70

 

[MtB]

29 minutes ago, magnetman said:

Why do people not put two decimals after the money number?

 

Maybe I am the only one who thinks £2.7 should be £2.70

 

 

Agreed. But I think £2.7 should be about £1.95.

 

 

[Alan de Enfield]

32 minutes ago, magnetman said:

Why do people not put two decimals after the money number?

 

Maybe I am the only one who thinks £2.7 should be £2.70

 

 

I'd actually prefer £2 -14s - 0d but we are where we are !!

Edited October 25, 2023 by Alan de Enfield