Definition of home mooring

[NigelMoore]

You are most welcome - it was high time they were made available 'in toto' for those interested to peruse at leisure and see exactly what BW had in mind with their legislation, as well as how Parliament viewed those intentions.

 

There can have been few more conscientious examinations of a private Act, largely due to the fresh and aspirational motivations of the MP's involved - signally the Chairman, George Mudie [still an MP and still interested in the waterways I am told].

[GreenDuck]

 

The law says if a boat has a home mooring, is insured and has a BSS then CRT can't refuse to issue a licence. They can stick their T&Cs up the exhaust of a shiny boat.

Genuine question here but to my understanding if CRT has not issued an L3 (commercial land) or end of garden permission then the mooring don't exist so there is no legal mooring.

A friend of mind has recently left a moorings business,he was telling me that CRT are very obstructive to the extent they have openly declared that will not allow any new online mooring sites.

I'm not arguing with you Sabcat but rather curious to know how you would stop CRT seizing your boat as you would have to move after 2 weeks as the mooring would be void or put on a restricted license and told to get a mooring or remove your boat from their water!!

[NigelMoore]

Final set of the Commons Select Committee minutes –

Day 8 - https://www.scribd.com/doc/297246148/SC-Minutes-1990-Bill-Day-8-1993

Day 9 - https://www.scribd.com/doc/297246150/SC-Minutes-1990-Bill-Day-9-1993

Day 10 - https://www.scribd.com/doc/297246154/SC-Minutes-1990-Bill-Day-10-1993

Day 12 - https://www.scribd.com/doc/297246153/SC-Minutes-1990-Bill-Day-12-1993

Day 13 - https://www.scribd.com/doc/297246152/SC-Minutes-1990-Bill-Day-13-1993

Day 14 - https://www.scribd.com/doc/297246149/SC-Minutes-1990-Bill-Day-14-1993

Day 16 - https://www.scribd.com/doc/297246151/SC-Minutes-1990-Bill-Day-16-1993

These were the final deliberations before the Bill was passed. Before it even got to this committee of course, it had had to wend its way through the House of Lords, the minutes of which are even more extensive.

It will be a further while before I post those up – but there is enough here to be getting on with I should think, and these minutes contain the most searching analysis of those portions of the Bill that are relevant to many of the questions posed on the Forum.

Edited January 31, 2016 by NigelMoore

[NigelMoore]

Genuine question here but to my understanding if CRT has not issued an L3 (commercial land) or end of garden permission then the mooring don't exist so there is no legal mooring.

A friend of mind has recently left a moorings business,he was telling me that CRT are very obstructive to the extent they have openly declared that will not allow any new online mooring sites.

I'm not arguing with you Sabcat but rather curious to know how you would stop CRT seizing your boat as you would have to move after 2 weeks as the mooring would be void or put on a restricted license and told to get a mooring or remove your boat from their water!!

 

It is right that CaRT should allow no more long-term towpath mooring sites, and the existing ones should be allowed to diminish through natural attrition [as is their stated policy].

 

However both CaRT and private offside property owners are fully entitled to create their own long-term offside mooring sites, providing only that the main navigable channel is not impeded. The right to do so is enshrined in the original enabling Acts, and specifically protected by s.20 of the 1995 Act.

 

BW did wish to abolish those rights when drafting the1990 Bill, but had to withdraw the relevant clause. There is, as a consequence, no power vested in CaRT to either permit or disallow these, or to levy charges for them [such charges being expressly prohibited under the enabling Acts]; the power to charge was vested solely in the riparian land owner.

 

The powers that they WERE granted in respect of such private offside moorings [s.21 of the 1995 Act], were limited to requiring a ‘safety certificate’ [unchargeable] by way of controlling the standard of structures built into, under or over the waterspace for facilitating such moorings. They could activate that power if they designated lengths of waterway for the purpose, but curiously, no such lengths have ever been so designated.

 

I am painfully aware that BW/CaRT deny all this and insist that their consent is required – but that is a position contradicted by the statutes. Without wishing to pre-empt his reply [which I had been looking forward to reading], Sabcat would have to stop CaRT seizing his boat by first of all writing a polite letter to them outlining the relevant legislation and recommending that they cease from the threat to do so.

 

In the almost inevitable event that they refused to do so, he would then have to inform them of his intent to bring an appropriate action against them if the s.8 was not withdrawn. On refusal to accede to that, he would have to apply for an injunction against their proceeding pending court determination of the legality of the mooring – and proceed with that action upon obtaining the injunction. An alternative would be to suggest an undertaking from CaRT, not to proceed until agreement between them had been reached, or a court finding made.

 

To succeed against Sabcat in any ensuing proceedings, CaRT would have to establish that some law existed prohibiting him from using that mooring; they would not be able to. As BW/CaRT themselves have acknowledged in their ‘informatives’ on moorings: “There are no public law provisions regarding moorings”, instead, they purport to exercise the common law right of a land owner to sue for trespass in floating over their canal bed. Even if that right was available to them [it is not] trespass would only happen via contact of some sort with the bed; the boat licence already grants the right for the boat to be kept on the water as distinct from using it for navigation.

 

I have traversed these points often enough before, and should reiterate the caveat that County Court judgments exist backing them up – these do NOT set any precedent, and have incorporated grave errors in fact and law, so should not prove any problem.

 

http://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=78116&p=1619409

 

http://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=78116&p=1619499

 

[Sabcat]

For me it's entirely hypothetical, I have a home mooring and that is where I return to and stay. That said, if I got myself some work in another part of the country and wanted to take my boat there and bridge hop for 6 months while keeping up payments on my home mooring the law says I can and if anyone else in the meantime finds themselves in dispute to with CRT for that same behaviour I will contribute to their fight however I can be that financially or just simple expression of support.

[NigelMoore]

For me it's entirely hypothetical . . .

 

I gathered that, as I think did GreenDuck. It was worth posting an answer to the hypothetical question though.

[Sabcat]

 

I gathered that, as I think did GreenDuck. It was worth posting an answer to the hypothetical question though.

 

If I found myself in that situation, I'd come on here and send you a PM

 

 

Edit for a more serious answer: If a person was in that situation then to my mind they've got 2 arguments on the go in one - the EOG argument that no one so far has taken on + the right to lurk in an area if you have a home mooring as long as you don't stay in the same spot for more than 14 days.

 

I think what I would do initially in that situation is get on the phone to some marinas and get myself a mooring sorted. That would buy me time. Then I could decide which fight I was going to take on, how and when. But seriously. I'd be sending messages to Nigel.

Edited February 1, 2016 by Sabcat