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NBTA - Which Planet Are They On ?


Alan de Enfield

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It is clear to see who the NBTA support :

 

On the Cam :

 

We call for those who are currently renting out existing council moorings or those with council moorings who live in a house, to have their mooring licences withdrawn and their moorings reallocated to those currently waiting for a mooring on the river and whose boat is their sole residence. Nobody who also owns a house or flat should be allowed to rent a council mooring and moorings should be allocated by social need, with priority given to families with school-age children currently on the river waiting for a council mooring as a matter of urgency.

In addition we propose that any Bargee Traveller family, not on 'The Railings', but living elsewhere on the Cam, be given a council mooring, irrespective of their position on the waiting lists. There are enough empty mooring spaces to accommodate everyone that needs one, yet the council chooses to let desperate families wait for years on end, causing terrible trauma and stress, and in this way interfering with family life and children's education

 

So anyone with a mooring who is not a liveaboard should have their licence revoked - priority given to families with children of school age

Obviously "Bargee Travellers".

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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At first it appears illogical, and/or a prominent case of positive discrimination for their core supporters. Do you have a link for the statement/article? The reason I ask, is that the NBTA isn't actually a mandated, democratic organisation - they have no election process, and anyone claiming to be an NBTA spokesman is simply claiming it, with no backing of anything more than a handful of others.

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Bit radical but they are the balance weight for the Daily Mail contingent . The sensible solution is usually some sort of fudge in the middle.

 

Building more affordable homes is the answer to all these problems but such a sensible approach is beyond the ability of the self serving muppets in the government .

  • Greenie 1
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They haven't put their case very well but I can see what they're getting at. The comparison would be if a family owned a house in, say, Reading but also had a council flat in central London, treating it as a holiday home, while families remain homeless on the waiting list for council housing. It's not a perfect comparison though. On one hand you could say that nobody has a right to live on the water, but on the other hand, it would do no favours to either side if all the liveaboards there did leave the water and claimed council housing. The council there have an opportunity to help provide much needed permanent homes for local families.

 

Slightly smiley_offtopic.gif :

My late Great-Aunt had a lovely and huge 3 bed Council flat in London with a gorgeous view right up the Thames, she raised a family in that flat and ended up alone there, bed-blocking you might say. She went to the Council offering to downsize to a 2 bedroom flat which would have helped the council by making a 3 bed flat available. The Council would only offer her a tiny 1 bed flat as she lived alone. She refused as she wouldn't then be able to have her children or grandchildren (or great grandchildren) to visit. So she stayed right up until the end. That view was magic though, she used to babysit my sister and I on new year's eve... If either of her children had thought to do so, they could have taken on the tenancy, exercised right-to-buy and made a fortune!

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FTS will have chapter and verse on this but I thought that a condition of the 'council' moorings was that they were residential?

 

The NBTA are as a rule a bunch of people considerably pushing their luck (that is the euphemism), but I think the moorings in question in this case are not normal leisure moorings.

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Bit radical but they are the balance weight for the Daily Mail contingent . The sensible solution is usually some sort of fudge in the middle.

 

Building more affordable homes is the answer to all these problems but such a sensible approach is beyond the ability of the self serving muppets in the government .

 

 

I'd say building more homes is helpful but never the answer. Housing demand is very elastic and if you make it cheaper by increasing supply, people will just consume more of it.

 

For example the four person nuclear family with a three bed house will find they can now afford a four bed house and have a guest room. The single bloke living in a studio flat will upgrade to the one bed flat he can now afford, etc etc.

 

All new housing is by definition 'affordable', because new houses never remain unsold. The builder reduces the price of any houses 'sticking' until someone decides it looks value for money and buys it.

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Building more affordable homes is the answer to all these problems

With the cost of land, materials and labour no house will be affordable for many. The answer was to have stopped Maggie selling off council houses.

 

Too late now! It is social housing that is required not affordable housing, as has been said all houses are afforded by somebody.

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They haven't put their case very well but I can see what they're getting at. The comparison would be if a family owned a house in, say, Reading but also had a council flat in central London, treating it as a holiday home, while families remain homeless on the waiting list for council housing. It's not a perfect comparison though. On one hand you could say that nobody has a right to live on the water, but on the other hand, it would do no favours to either side if all the liveaboards there did leave the water and claimed council housing. The council there have an opportunity to help provide much needed permanent homes for local families.

 

 

I thought that if you owned a property or did not live in a council property that you were renting, then you had to surrender the property back to the council, could be wrong of cause.

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i would hazzard guess that councils dont regard moorings as housing stock but more leisure stock like allotments etc and as such the same rules do not apply and they are allocated via a waiting list with no assessment of need . Are these mooring residential ? or leisure moorings ?

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There is a bit of background to this.

 

There are 70 residential mooring licences in Cambridge (plus an area with 40-50 boats that was previously unregulated) which are run by Cambridge City Council, the riparian landowner.

 

There is a long waiting list for the moorings- about 20 years for a widebeam boat, partly because there are very few alternatives anywhere nearby, but also because they are very cheap for a prime city centre mooring location.

 

Although it is stipulated by the council in the contract that the mooring has to be the licence holder's main residence, there are a few people who don't live aboard, as it's cheaper to have the full residential mooring than it is to have a leisure mooring anywhere else....

 

The author of this piece doesn't like that the moorings are administered this way, and thinks they should be allocated like social housing, putting families first- which has very little support from anyone else. The author has also got a large Dutch Barge, three children and no mooring, but believes she has a right to skip the waiting list and be given a mooring.

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Sounds similar to what the local councils are now applying to piss taker council tenants? If It isn't your primary residence, why should the rest of the UK subsidise you profiting as a landlord? (or even worse, leaving it empty)

Edited by wiltshirewonderer
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From the NBTA website -

 

Background to the 'statement' :

 

"...the council intends to criminalise, prosecute and evict Bargee Travellers from the river if they do not have a mooring or a residential mooring licence"

 

As it only appears to be C&RT that are subject to allowing CC activities, the councils actions seem to be reasonable.

If you want to CC (or not pay for a mooring) then move onto waters that allow you to do so.

If you want a mooring, are prepared to pay for it but non are available, move onto waters with available moorings.

 

It is not a 'right' to be able to insist that you can live where you want to live.

  • Greenie 2
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Jerra I agree totally about the selling off of social housing .

 

MTB , housing is too important to be a free for all with the highest bidder winning . It's ok for our age group but the younger people , Generation rent as some describe themselves are struggling to get near the housing ladder.

 

I have some sympathy with the NBTA stance here . I'd be mightily hacked off if I was being kept off a residential mooring by somebody who had a house to live in. However I do believe in waiting lists , expecting to skip the que isn't a plan other than in truly exemption all circumstances.

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So if I'm understanding this correctly, the NBTA are basically calling for the Council to (1) enforce their own rules by revoking the licences of people using their boats as buy-to-lets or holiday homes rather than main residences, (2) apply basically the same rules when allocating these residential moorings as they'd apply when allocating other forms of housing (in terms of basing priority on social need), and (3)... well, I'm not clear on (3). What are the NBTA talking about when they talk about 'empty mooring spaces'? Presumably they mean spaces that could (in their opinion) be designated as residential moorings, rather than spaces that have been designated as residential moorings but haven't been allocated to anyone?

 

In any case, (1) and (2) don't seem unreasonable on the face of it... do they?

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I am un sure about the NBTA; is it the organisation which John Sloan founded?

 

Everyday you're posting comments about the canals, as if with some authority, and you don't even know that?

 

That says a lot. And, probably others on here voicing their opinions similarly blinkered.

  • Greenie 1
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Everyday you're posting comments about the canals, as if with some authority, and you don't even know that?

 

Like most of us, I am not omniscient; that's why I asked the question, which Carl has already answered, thanks anyway.

  • Greenie 2
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