GOODBYE CRT........

[magnetman]

Do unsurance salesmen generally like narrow Boats? I would have put them in the 'we have a small yacht on the south coast near Dartmouth and a BMW and a terrifically generic medium sized house in an effluent postcode area' box. Terrible stereotyping I know. 

 

 

[Tonka]

7 hours ago, The Grey Goose said:

 

The lady you refer to is very nice and still collects on a daily basis.

Yes I know, but she used to hate members of NABO.

Hard to believe she was still there as we moved off the Thames in 2009

[ditchcrawler]

56 minutes ago, MartynG said:

My insurance is  silent in the subject of BSS and License

I would be interested to see the relevant wording from your insurance documents.

 

 

 

 

 

Section h

[MtB]

13 minutes ago, magnetman said:

Do unsurance salesmen generally like narrow Boats? I would have put them in the 'we have a small yacht on the south coast near Dartmouth and a BMW and a terrifically generic medium sized house in an effluent postcode area' box. Terrible stereotyping I know. 

 

 

I never knew one could type in stereo. 

 

I'm off to google that! 

 

[magnetman]

I was offered the job of collecting the mooring fees at the Cookham moorings (plus a mooring) in 1996. Didn't fancy it as had too much Boating to do at the time. 

After a long absence mainly to do with Boating I have ended up in the same area again.

Interesting bit of land there. I don't know if its church owned or council. I think it might be the latter and ...

 

The bits further down towards the bridge are owned by the Windsor and Maidenhead flood alleviation scheme / EA hence the squatters. Above the sailing club its private land owned by one side of the Copas family who are farmers/land owners in the area. 

 

 

 

[Tonka]

3 minutes ago, magnetman said:

I was offered the job of collecting the mooring fees at the Cookham moorings (plus a mooring) in 1996. Didn't fancy it as had too much Boating to do at the time. 

After a long absence mainly to do with Boating I have ended up in the same area again.

Interesting bit of land there. I don't know if its church owned or council. I think it might be the latter and ...

 

The bits further down towards the bridge are owned by the Windsor and Maidenhead flood alleviation scheme / EA hence the squatters. Above the sailing club its private land owned by one side of the Copas family who are farmers/land owners in the area. 

 

 

 

Always seemed strange that the receipt you got from the lady in Cookham looked home made. It was an A5 loose leaf lined paper with a stamped letter head with the councils name on. Thought it would have been properly printed

[Momac]

6 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Section h

Thank you 

 

So that clause  means any non compliance with BSS could invalidate the insurance. We all know that the presence of a BSS certificate is not a guarantee that the boat complies with the BSS.

 

[magnetman]

3 minutes ago, Tonka said:

Always seemed strange that the receipt you got from the lady in Cookham looked home made. It was an A5 loose leaf lined paper with a stamped letter head with the councils name on. Thought it would have been properly printed

There is a can of worms there with Ultra Vires written on it. 

[MtB]

13 minutes ago, MartynG said:

Thank you 

 

So that clause  means any non compliance with BSS could invalidate the insurance. We all know that the presence of a BSS certificate is not a guarantee that the boat complies with the BSS.

 

 

Conversely, we all also know a boat can be fully compliant with the BSS and yet not have a certificate. 

 

 

[The Grey Goose]

29 minutes ago, magnetman said:

I was offered the job of collecting the mooring fees at the Cookham moorings (plus a mooring) in 1996. Didn't fancy it as had too much Boating to do at the time. 

After a long absence mainly to do with Boating I have ended up in the same area again.

Interesting bit of land there. I don't know if its church owned or council. I think it might be the latter and ...

 

The bits further down towards the bridge are owned by the Windsor and Maidenhead flood alleviation scheme / EA hence the squatters. Above the sailing club its private land owned by one side of the Copas family who are farmers/land owners in the area. 

 

 

 

Why are we even talking about mooring fees at Cookham and baliffs and local landowners etc  , its irrelevant to the original topic

[Momac]

6 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

Conversely, we all also know a boat can be fully compliant with the BSS and yet not have a certificate. 

 

 

This is true

So the existence of an unexpired   BSS certificate is not an insurance requirement (even if the above noted clause is present).

[ditchcrawler]

35 minutes ago, magnetman said:

. Above the sailing club its private land owned by one side of the Copas family who are farmers/land owners in the area. 

 

 

 

I bet you don't get to squat there for free

[magnetman]

 

9 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

I bet you don't get to squat there for free

They have a bank manager. Same person who is bailiff for the council owned land I think. 

 

 

[Arthur Marshall]

14 minutes ago, MartynG said:

This is true

So the existence of an unexpired   BSS certificate is not an insurance requirement (even if the above noted clause is present).

I'm sure any reputable insurance agent could find a BSS inspector to declare a boat non compliant, seeing as no two inspectors can agree what compliance actually entails.

[magnetman]

Interesting to note the Council want to use the Bellrope meadow site for short term moorings. 

Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead
https://www.rbwm.gov.uk › media
Letterhead template

 

 

I wonder idly if they have a byelaw to back this up with. 

 Also wonder about Other Things ! 

 

[Mike Adams]

Surely the biggest difference between the Thames and canals is the mooring cost. Probably twice the cost on the Thames compared to canals outside London. As a long term boater on the Thames, both recreational and commercial I am fed up with these huge wide beam boats and barges. They take up most of the moorings meant for cruising and hire  boats on the 24hour moorings and just seem to move around the same moorings or stay there until they get pushed off. They spend ages at water points and are a general pain. If you want to live on a boat find a residential mooring or go into a marina which is going to cost you a lot more than the license fee.

The TC provided these 24 hour moorings for cruising boats not houseboats.

[Momac]

24 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

I'm sure any reputable insurance agent could find a BSS inspector to declare a boat non compliant, seeing as no two inspectors can agree what compliance actually entails.

On that basis would you buy insurance with the above noted clause included?

48 minutes ago, The Grey Goose said:

Why are we even talking about mooring fees at Cookham and baliffs and local landowners etc  , its irrelevant to the original topic

Thread drift is usual  on this forum

[BoatinglifeupNorth]

58 minutes ago, The Grey Goose said:

Why are we even talking about mooring fees at Cookham and baliffs and local landowners etc  , its irrelevant to the original topic

 

13 minutes ago, MartynG said:

Thread drift is usual  on this forum

Or people aren’t that bothered about another widebeam owner going on about the cost of his licence and moving  onto somewhere cheaper. Thread drift? Or something more interesting than the OP going on about saving £200 a year?💷💷

[kevinl]

8 hours ago, beerbeerbeerbeerbeer said:

I’ve paid about £70 a week to leave my smaller and thinner boat while I’m away for 5/6 weeks. 
 

mind it is in a rather salubrious area in the Midlands. 
 

Merry Xmas one and all 

Just watch out for the taxman doing that.

K

[junior]

12 hours ago, magnetman said:

He's got a sea going boat

Having said that I have seen standard wide bean canal Boats in Ramsgit harbour and also at on the Hamble near Southampton, Tollesbury I am sure there are others. Newhaven. 

There's one in Brighton Marina 

[Arthur Marshall]

37 minutes ago, MartynG said:

On that basis would you buy insurance with the above noted clause included?

Thread drift is usual  on this forum

Never had more than 3rd party insurance. No point in comprehensive for mine.

[The Grey Goose]

1 hour ago, Mike Adams said:

Surely the biggest difference between the Thames and canals is the mooring cost. Probably twice the cost on the Thames compared to canals outside London. As a long term boater on the Thames, both recreational and commercial I am fed up with these huge wide beam boats and barges. They take up most of the moorings meant for cruising and hire  boats on the 24hour moorings and just seem to move around the same moorings or stay there until they get pushed off. They spend ages at water points and are a general pain. If you want to live on a boat find a residential mooring or go into a marina which is going to cost you a lot more than the license fee.

The TC provided these 24 hour moorings for cruising boats not houseboats.

Thats officially documented is it or just the way that you would like things to be?

Why should hire boats or GRP cruisers get first dibs , if a boat is licensed to be on the water theres no argument......so much hate on these forums against widebeams ....not welcome anywhere.

For those banging on about me saving 200 quid in 2024 , Im looking longer term at the huge hikes scheduled by 2028.

Edited December 26, 2023 by The Grey Goose

[MtB]

14 minutes ago, The Grey Goose said:

Thats officially documented is it or just the way that you would like things to be?

 

 

Calm down, its an anecdote by a regular poster here explaining how they see things.

 

Perfectly legitimate and probably about right I'd suggest, having met the poster myself. 

 

 

 

[Tony1]

14 hours ago, MtB said:

 

I wish Parry would grasp the nettle and double or triple canal boat licences and stop all this tinkering about at the margins

 

 

None of us can predict this with any real confidence, but my own guess is that CRT are trying to strike a balance between squeezing more money from boaters, versus pricing too many them off of the canals, and ending up with a net loss in licence income.

 

I would imagine that if they tripled the cost of the license next year (and with an even higher increase for CCers), that would drive thousands of boaters away from the canals. I would probably be one of them, to be honest. 

So how many boaters would they lose by tripling the licence fee? None of us really know, but my guess is it could easily be in the order of 20-30%.

 

And not just CCers. I bet a few thousand boaters with marina home moorings would seriously consider selling their boat if they faced a tripling of the license fee. 

 

But the long term effects might be problematic for everyone. With 10,000 or more used boats on the market in very short order, boat prices would fall, and they might stay low, because most of the prospective new boat buyers would be deterred by the high license fee.

 

Unless CRT reacted quickly and reduce the fee (to encourage more people to buy boats and license them), it might be that the remaining 20,000 or so boaters would have to shoulder the cost that was previously spread between (roughly) 35,000 boaters.  

In fairness- on paper at least- it would seem to add up.

E.g. even in the 'doomsday' worst-case idea that CRT lose 60% of the current boaters, they would be getting triple the fees from each of the 12,000 boaters or so that were left, so their total licence income would seem to stay the same.

 

But looking forwards, will enough new boaters take to the canals to replace the older folks that are giving up boating because of age or infirmity?  

 

If they start to lose more older boaters each year than the number of new boaters they gain, they might have to squeeze the existing boaters even harder to make up the reduced income, and you could see the license fee go up to four or even five times its current level (whatever  they think their smaller customer base will pay, basically)- so that boating eventually becomes a pastime for the very well off. 

And with much reduced boat traffic, some sections could fall even further into disuse than they are now, which could lead to a closing of many sections, or perhaps a closing of lock flights.  

 

Ending up with a high-paying and affluent (but shrinking) customer base of say 15,000 (whom they may have to squeeze ever harder to meet their costs) would seem to put CRT in a more precarious position that they are now, with a customer base of 35,000 license payers. 

 

To be honest, its all finger in the air stuff, obviously- and I could well be way wide of the mark, but I do think an increase of 300% in one year would have a huge impact on boat numbers, and it could send the CRT into a spiral of falling customer numbers and falling licence income, at least in the longer term. And a major fall in boat traffic might allow them to justify making many more closures too. 

 

Edited December 26, 2023 by Tony1

[The Grey Goose]

1 minute ago, MtB said:

 

 

Calm down, its an anecdote by a regular poster here explaining how they see things.

 

Perfectly legitimate and probably about right I'd suggest, having met the poster myself. 

 

 

 

Perfectly calm here Thanks , I haven't dispsraged any other boat users for there type of vessel or how they use it. My vote is against the current charging plans from the CRT.

5 minutes ago, Tony1 said:

 

None of us can predict this with any real confidence, but my own guess is that CRT are trying to strike a balance between squeezing more money from boaters, versus pricing too many them off of the canals, and ending up with a net loss in licence income.

 

I would imagine that if they tripled the cost of the license next year (and with an even higher increase for CCers), that would drive thousands of boaters away from the canals. I would probably be one of them, to be honest. 

So how many boaters would they lose by tripling the licence fee? None of us really know, but my guess it could easily be in the order of 20-30%.

 

And not just CCers. I bet a few thousand boaters with marina home moorings would seriously consider selling their boat if they faced a tripling of the license fee. 

 

But the long term effects might be problematic for everyone. With 20,000 boats on the market in very short order, boat prices would fall, and might stay low, because prospective new boaters would not want to meet the high license fee.

 

Unless CRT reacted quickly and reduce the fee (to encourage more people to buy boats and license them), it might be that the remaining 20,000 or so boaters would have to shoulder the cost that was previously spread between (roughly) 35,000 boaters.  

On paper at least, it would seem to add up.

E.g. even if CRT lose 60% of boaters, they would be getting triple the fees from each of the 12,000 boater or so that were left, so their total income would seem to stay the same.

But looking forwards, will enough new boaters take to the canals to replace the older folks that are giving up boating because of age or infirmity?  

 

If they start to lose more older boaters each year than the number of new boaters they gain, they might have to squeeze the existing boaters even harder to make up the reduced income, and you could see the license fee go up to four or even five times its current level (whatever  they think their smaller customer base will pay, basically)- so that boating eventually becomes a pastime for the very well off. 

And with much reduced boat traffic, some sections could fall even further into disuse than they are now, which could lead to a closing of many sections, or perhaps a closing of lock flights.  

 

Having a shrinking customer base of 10,000 and falling (that they are forced to squeeze ever harder to meet their costs) would seem to put CRT in a more precarious position that they are, with a customer base of 35,000 license payers. 

 

To be honest, its all finger in the air stuff, obviously- and I could well be way wide of the mark, but I do think an increase of 300% in one year would have a huge impact on boat numbers, and it could send the CRT into a spiral of falling customer numbers and falling licence income, at least in the longer term. And a 50% fall in boat traffic might allow them to justify making many more closures too. 

 

A round of applause to you Sir , this is the best , coherant , considered response that I have seen all day.