Business licence

[MtB]

17 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Doesn't matter if you or I agree, most of the hmers voted in favour so it's what we get!

 

 

I don't think it matters what the survey result gave.

 

CRT were going to put up prices and try to correct the obvious iniquities in the fee structure regardless. The survey result just made it easy to justify. 

[TheBiscuits]

3 minutes ago, IanD said:

Or most boaters voted in favour... 😉

 

Well yes, as you are well aware and have discussed previously.

 

I do suspect a higher proportion of hmers voted to surcharge ccers than ccers did!

 

 

2 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

I don't think it matters what the survey result gave.

 

CRT were going to put up prices and try to correct the obvious iniquities in the fee structure regardless. The survey result just made it easy to justify. 

 

Not sure about that.  In the unlikely event that all responses said "Go on, add another ten percent, we don't mind" CRT would probably have gone that route.

 

[Alan de Enfield]

1 hour ago, beerbeerbeerbeerbeer said:

Just checked mine,

yes the surcharge applies and it looks like the annual increase goes up about 9%(?) too,

making about 14% in total

 

 

 

 

That makes me feel better - I was only 1% out on the base figure used in all my above examples.

 

I had based the calculations on 10% underlying licence increase and +5% for the "CC Licence surcharge"

[dmr]

I expect CRT also thought long and hard (I hope) about not reducing income by forcing too many boaters to give up. CC'ers really are sitting ducks, its their home and lifestyle so hard to give up. For some leisure boaters its just an expensive hobby and a new hobby could be found, or maybe a return to hiring. For many the economics must be pretty marginal anyway without huge price increases,

[MtB]

2 hours ago, dmr said:

I expect CRT also thought long and hard (I hope) about not reducing income by forcing too many boaters to give up. CC'ers really are sitting ducks, its their home and lifestyle so hard to give up.

 

Given the alternative of moving ashore is going to cost a CCer about £12k a year in rent (in the south of England), I can't see many moving ashore for financial reasons even if CRT loaded up the CC licence fees by £2k or £3k, let alone the £200 or £300 currently. 

 

I suppose moving onto the Thames might look attractive, or vanlife-ing.

 

 

Edited February 16 by MtB

[Arthur Marshall]

2 hours ago, dmr said:

 

CRT say its to reflect the increased use of the system but maybe thats just how their PR people chose to spin it. Looking at the figures I estimate that the surcharge comes out moderately close to what CRT would get from a boat with a home mooring

No it doesn't. My licence this year is just over a thousand quid. CRT get over eight hundred quid off me for my EOG fee. My maths skills may have gone off a bit, but I think that's slightly more than 25%. And as that is calculated as half their local mooring fee, it means one of their moorers must be paying about £1700 for online mooring, in addition to their licence. That's not 25% either. Or, for that matter, 5%.

 

[dmr]

5 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

No it doesn't. My licence this year is just over a thousand quid. CRT get over eight hundred quid off me for my EOG fee. My maths skills may have gone off a bit, but I think that's slightly more than 25%. And as that is calculated as half their local mooring fee, it means one of their moorers must be paying about £1700 for online mooring, in addition to their licence. That's not 25% either. Or, for that matter, 5%.

 

 

Read the next post that I did 😀The vast majority of boats are in marinas where CRT get about 10%. EoG moorings are relatively rare. "Farmers Field" moorings are a bit more common but still much less than marinas. As far as I can tell the % paid to CRT from farmers fields is a bit variable but 50% will be the upper limit.

 

[MtB]

12 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

No it doesn't. My licence this year is just over a thousand quid. CRT get over eight hundred quid off me for my EOG fee. My maths skills may have gone off a bit, but I think that's slightly more than 25%. And as that is calculated as half their local mooring fee, it means one of their moorers must be paying about £1700 for online mooring, in addition to their licence. That's not 25% either. Or, for that matter, 5%.

 

 

 

Jeez boating is so CHEAP up north. 

 

[dmr]

14 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

 

Jeez boating is so CHEAP up north. 

 

 

That is more or less the going rate and CRT valuation for a Northern Mooring, though Arthur is not really proper North. The beer is cheaper and better but the weather can be a bit dodgy, and that much sought after "lock free cruising" is not always available, in fact the locks can be a bit big and hard work.

Luckily the southerners are willing to pay a lot more for a mooring otherwise CRT would be in even worse financial trouble.

Three weeks of pleasant cruising and you could be up here, maybe only two if you really tried.

[TheBiscuits]

8 minutes ago, dmr said:

Three weeks of pleasant cruising and you could be up here, maybe only two if you really tried.

 

Tuckeys or Bowern ... He'd be there same day!

[MtB]

14 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Tuckeys or Bowern ... He'd be there same day!

 

To be fair I could be there in a day anyway without Barry or Ray helping. Just with no boat! 

Still quite taken with the idea of buying a cheap sinker already up there, given how cheap Arthur says moorings are.

 

 

 

[dmr]

6 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

 

Tuckeys or Bowern ... He'd be there same day!

 

Yes but...

Up the Oxford (pint in the Folly?) GU to Warwick (Cape of Good Hope)

Up Hatton and North Stratford into Brum (a couple of decent pubs)

Back out and down Tardebigge, (via the Weighbridge),

Droitwich down to the Severn and a couple of locks up to Stourport (maybe the Black Star).

Whole length of the lovely S&W up to the T&M.

Several beers in Stone (probably the Swan) and then the Holy inadequate.

Through the big tunnel into the almost North then up the Macc.

Down Marple (if its ever fixed) then the Ashton down into Manchester, a first taste of Northern Urban locks but at least they are narrow.

A night in New Islington and beer at Cask. (MtB will feel at home here as its Southern prices).

A quick dash up the Rochdale(!!!) and beer at the Golden Lion.

Better than the back of a lorry 😀

[Arthur Marshall]

23 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

To be fair I could be there in a day anyway without Barry or Ray helping. Just with no boat! 

Still quite taken with the idea of buying a cheap sinker already up there, given how cheap Arthur says moorings are.

 

 

 

Marinas cost a stack more, obviously. I've always moored on farms, in thirty years never paid more than £500 for the farm mooring, plus the EOG. No facilities, no power. If you parked a sinker up here, without anyone to keep an eye on it, it probably would sink. It rains a lot and bilge pumps fail a lot.

I'm making an assumption as to what a CRT mooring costs as the EOG is meant to be half. Farm moorings on the Macc are like hen's teeth, but a couple of folk on here have settled on my mooring when we had vacancies.

[David Mack]

12 hours ago, dmr said:

I expect CRT also thought long and hard (I hope) about not reducing income by forcing too many boaters to give up. CC'ers really are sitting ducks, its their home and lifestyle so hard to give up. For some leisure boaters its just an expensive hobby and a new hobby could be found, or maybe a return to hiring. For many the economics must be pretty marginal anyway without huge price increases,

Economists and businesses spend lots of time thinking about price elasticity - the rate at which demand falls as the price increases. Somewhere in the middle there is a sweet spot that maximises revenue, and that is what the price increases are designed to tap into. 

Having made the decision to charge different licence fees for different types of boat, the price for each group can then be varied to reflect the different price elasticities of the different user classes. As has been pointed out, for many liveaboards the alternative is significantly more expensive, so they will mostly bear the cost. Yes I know that 'liveaboard' is not the same as 'CCer', but there is a broad overlap, and its a separate licence type that already exists, so relatively easy to implement. And similarly for widebeams.

The fact that the CCer and widebeam surcharges can be spun as roughly equating to the extra costs such boats cost CRT is fortuitous, as it means the changes can be promoted as addressing an unfairness in the current system. And with the side benefit of discouraging the growth of both craft types, which is seen as undesirable by the majority of boaters (I.e. narrow beam owners with a home mooring).

[BilgePump]

10 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

Marinas cost a stack more, obviously. I've always moored on farms, in thirty years never paid more than £500 for the farm mooring, plus the EOG. No facilities, no power. If you parked a sinker up here, without anyone to keep an eye on it, it probably would sink. It rains a lot and bilge pumps fail a lot.

I'm making an assumption as to what a CRT mooring costs as the EOG is meant to be half. Farm moorings on the Macc are like hen's teeth, but a couple of folk on here have settled on my mooring when we had vacancies.

Up to 48' 7" / 14.80m mooring at Bosley Top Lock L1 Leisure available now, currently on offer at £1858 (approx £38.30/ft)

Up to 27' 3" / 8.30m mooring at Higher Poynton L1 Leisure available now, currently on offer at £1074(approx £37.60/ft)

Those figures suggest that £1700 would get you approx 45' of CaRT mooring

[Alan de Enfield]

14 minutes ago, BilgePump said:

Up to 48' 7" / 14.80m mooring at Bosley Top Lock L1 Leisure available now, currently on offer at £1858 (approx £38.30/ft)

Up to 27' 3" / 8.30m mooring at Higher Poynton L1 Leisure available now, currently on offer at £1074(approx £37.60/ft)

Those figures suggest that £1700 would get you approx 45' of CaRT mooring

 

 

But going back to the OPs requirements I think the conclusion reached is that to be able to get a business licence (to do ABNB) she needs a residential mooring and not a leisure mooring.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 17 by Alan de Enfield

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

3 hours ago, David Mack said:

The fact that the CCer and widebeam surcharges can be spun as roughly equating to the extra costs such boats cost CRT is fortuitous,

I came back to reply to dmr and suggest why I wasn’t totally convinced with his reckoning and I’ve found you’ve said pretty much what I wanted to say 👍
Perhaps any search for a comparison between the figures is wishful thinking and any similarities found is a lucky (or contrived) outcome. 

25% over 5 years can be seen as a nice easy round figure to deal with that pushes without pushing too far and goes somewhere towards placating those home moorers who think ccers don’t pay enough

 

Edited February 17 by beerbeerbeerbeerbeer

[Mike Todd]

18 hours ago, dmr said:

 

That works out well and was roughly the quick mental calculation that I did.

As mtb says, there are CRT owned moorings where they get the lot, EoG moorings where there get 50% with no real outgoings on their part, all sorts of farmers field moorings where the CRT percentage likely depends on various historic arrangements, so in general I expect the CC surcharge is probably a little less than the CRT mooring cut, but your equality is a good first approximation.

The surcharge has the added bonus that it might deter a few "cheap housing/not really interested in boating" future CCers, while hopefully not forcing some of the interesting canal characters off the cut.

 

Thats the downside, its a lot of grief, possible bad publicity, potential legal challenges, and other expenses for not a very big extra income, but maybe lots of extra little incomes might be the only way to save the system.

That is what you always get when you transfer the cost of a service from the public sector onto individual service users. 

18 hours ago, dmr said:

I expect CRT also thought long and hard (I hope) about not reducing income by forcing too many boaters to give up. CC'ers really are sitting ducks, its their home and lifestyle so hard to give up. For some leisure boaters its just an expensive hobby and a new hobby could be found, or maybe a return to hiring. For many the economics must be pretty marginal anyway without huge price increases,

'sitting'? - CCers, never!

5 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

 

But going back to the OPs requirements I think the conclusion reached is that to be able to get a business licence (to do ABNB) she needs a residential mooring and not a leisure mooring.

 

 

 

 

As well as finding a mooring whose owner agrees with the business usage.

[Alan de Enfield]

36 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

That is what you always get when you transfer the cost of a service from the public sector onto individual service users. 

'sitting'? - CCers, never!

As well as finding a mooring whose owner agrees with the business usage.

 

If it was inexpensive and easy to do the canals would be littered with ABNB boats.

But, it is neither !

Edited February 17 by Alan de Enfield

[Mike Todd]

21 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

If it was inexpensive and easy to do the canals would be littered with ABNB boats.

But, it is neither !

On this forum it would be better to refer to Airbnb to avoid confusion with ABNB a reputable boat broker (or perhaps you were trying to amplify such conflation!)

[Alan de Enfield]

10 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

On this forum it would be better to refer to Airbnb to avoid confusion with ABNB a reputable boat broker (or perhaps you were trying to amplify such conflation!)

 

I just cannot win - when I have previously used "Airbnb" the pedants (and there are a few on here) said that wrong and to use ABNB.

[MtB]

2 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

I just cannot win - when I have previously used "Airbnb" the pedants (and there are a few on here) said that wrong and to use ABNB.

 

Really?!

 

I think the pedants had it wrong. 

 

 

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

never use an Air B and B, 

a devil’s invention,!

I got friends in Cornwall who moan about the lack of available housing and rental accommodation yet let theirproperties out for air b and b,

 

 

[Mike Todd]

2 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

I just cannot win - when I have previously used "Airbnb" the pedants (and there are a few on here) said that wrong and to use ABNB.

Airbnb

Holiday property rentals company

 

 

from their website