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Unusual query from C&RT


colmac

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Can anyone shed light on a recent e-mail enquiry I have had from CRT licensing, perhaps even had a similar experience. We have held a boat license for 5 years, permanent mooring, renewed annually obviously. I received an e-mail today from the licensing people in Leeds asking me to update where we moor. I would have thought that the last 5 years would have answered that. The e-mail went on to say that if I didn't tell them where we moor within 28 days we would be classed as continuous cruisers despite being on the same mooring for 5 years. I tried to do this on the link attached to the mail and could not enter the actual mooring we are on as I had to choose from a drop down list and our mooring was not on this list. We moor in the upper basin at Stourport on the moorings owned by Limekilns chandlers. I will phone them tomorrow and clarify things but was just curious as to whether anyone else has had a similar situation.

Thank you

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6 minutes ago, alvicchas1 said:

Interesting - I thought the licence fee is the same if you are a continuous cruiser or have a mooring. What difference does it make to CRT.

So they can see if you are " Bone fide " cruising which people with a permanent mooring don't have to adhere to. Awaiting incoming.

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21 hours ago, colmac said:

I tried to do this on the link attached to the mail and could not enter the actual mooring we are on as I had to choose from a drop down list and our mooring was not on this list.

 

This is the root of the problem. The mooring you have appears not to be a CRT recognised mooring (possibly because the mooring provider is not paying their EOG liability) or it would be on the drop down list. So as far as CRT is concerned you don't have a mooring and should be complying with CC rules.

Will be interesting to hear the result of your phone convo with them!

Edited by Mike the Boilerman
spellchecker changing stuff again. must figure out how to turn it OFF
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53 minutes ago, alvicchas1 said:

But don't people with moorings have to follow the "14 day rule" when cruising?

Yes and no. I think the moot point comes down to a definition of place - which I suspect is different for home moorers and Ccers.  Neither can stay in one place for more than 14 days, but a home moorer doesn't have to be on a long term cruise so, logically, can stay around their home area within a much smaller range or places. We have to, or we can't go home.  Gods help us all if anyone tries to take it to court, because it then becomes impossible to predict what the level of daftness the inhabitant of the wig will come up with, and we'll all be stuck with it. 

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1 hour ago, alvicchas1 said:

But don't people with moorings have to follow the "14 day rule" when cruising?

Boaters WITH a home mooring have to be in a different 'place' every 14 days. but, can go from A to B to A to B to A to ..............

Whilst boaters WITHOUT a home mooring have to be in a different 'place' every 14 days and must go from A to B to C to D to E ........

 

Extract from HHJ Halbert (the Judge in the case of C&RT Vs Mayers)

6:3 There are clear anomalies in both positions, CRT clearly regard the occupation of moorings by permanently residential boat owners who do not move very much as a significant problem (see paragraphs 3.5 and 3.6 above). However, neither the statutory regime in subsection 17(3) nor the guidelines can deal with this problem. A boat which has a home mooring is not required to be “bona fide” used for navigation throughout the period of the licence, but neither is it required to ever use its home mooring. The act requires that the mooring is available, it does not say it must be used. The guidelines also have this effect. The boat is still subject to the restriction that it must not stay in the same place for more than 14 days but there is nothing whatever to stop it being shuffled between two locations quite close together provided they are far enough apart to constitute different places. If those who are causing the overcrowding at popular spots have home moorings anywhere in the country the present regime cannot control their overuse of the popular spots. Such an owner could cruise to and fro along the Kennet & Avon canal near Bristol and the home mooring could be in Birmingham and totally unused.

 

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1 hour ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

This is the root of the problem. The mooring you have appears not to be a CRT recognised mooring (possibly because the mooring provider is not paying their EOG liability) or it would be on the drop down list. So as far as CRT is concerned you don't have a mooring and should be complying with CC rules.

Will be interesting to here the result of your phone convo with them!

We had the same problem when moored at Napton Junction, and C&ART had great difficulty in understanduing where our mooring was located. The Mooring owner did not pay any EOG fee because when the land was sold by BW, the deeds included mooring rights. Three rounds of correspondance finally resolved the issue.

Edited by David Schweizer
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1 hour ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

This is the root of the problem. The mooring you have appears not to be a CRT recognised mooring (possibly because the mooring provider is not paying their EOG liability) or it would be on the drop down list. So as far as CRT is concerned you don't have a mooring and should be complying with CC rules.

Will be interesting to here the result of your phone convo with them!

I have not been asked to provide details of my permanent home mooring, so I don't know what the form is. But on guesswork it sounds as thought it needs a 'Not on list ' box to tick - with a 'pop-up box' to give details of the 'Address of Mooring' - for CRT to contact you if something is wrong.

 All too easy. 

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It's common for CaRT to not include a particular mooring in their drop down list. Last year I noticed my mooring was specified as that of a nearby commercial operator when in fact I moor at a private boat club. After contacting CaRT to point out the discrepancy my mooring location changed to 'Calder Navigation', It seems the database manager at CaRT has problems adding locations to the list.

On the other hand the club recently signed up for the moorings validation scheme only to be sent a list of boat allegedly moored at the club. Only one was genuine.I suspect it is more a case of CRT having incorrect data rather than boats claiming a ghost mooring.

I think all this scrutiny is probably them trying to rectify past mistakes rather than harassing boaters.

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2 hours ago, colmac said:

Can anyone shed light on a recent e-mail enquiry I have had from CRT licensing, perhaps even had a similar experience. We have held a boat license for 5 years, permanent mooring, renewed annually obviously. I received an e-mail today from the licensing people in Leeds asking me to update where we moor. I would have thought that the last 5 years would have answered that. The e-mail went on to say that if I didn't tell them where we moor within 28 days we would be classed as continuous cruisers despite being on the same mooring for 5 years. I tried to do this on the link attached to the mail and could not enter the actual mooring we are on as I had to choose from a drop down list and our mooring was not on this list. We moor in the upper basin at Stourport on the moorings owned by Limekilns chandlers. I will phone them tomorrow and clarify things but was just curious as to whether anyone else has had a similar situation.

Thank you

She is only there three times a week and friday isnt one of them I have been ringing her all day and no answer was the loud reply!!! In fact I have been calling her since before christmas so good luck with getting an answer

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18 hours ago, colmac said:

Can anyone shed light on a recent e-mail enquiry I have had from CRT licensing, perhaps even had a similar experience. We have held a boat license for 5 years, permanent mooring, renewed annually obviously. I received an e-mail today from the licensing people in Leeds asking me to update where we moor. I would have thought that the last 5 years would have answered that. The e-mail went on to say that if I didn't tell them where we moor within 28 days we would be classed as continuous cruisers despite being on the same mooring for 5 years. I tried to do this on the link attached to the mail and could not enter the actual mooring we are on as I had to choose from a drop down list and our mooring was not on this list. We moor in the upper basin at Stourport on the moorings owned by Limekilns chandlers. I will phone them tomorrow and clarify things but was just curious as to whether anyone else has had a similar situation.

Thank you

Do a data request under the data protection act to ensure they are using your data properly.

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I think I have resolved the situation after a discussion with a fellow moorer.  Instead of entering Stourport on the find mooring bit I entered Limekiln moorings ( private ) and it has accepted this so the problem seems to be sorted. However, I have been around large organisations for long enough to know that life is never that simple so will watch this space.

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Isnt the CRT asset code shown on the actual licence, just above where it says Standard Canal & River Licence, ours is SJ-001-006, If you've been there 5 years, what has it said on yours for the last 5 years. Theres a page on RT somewhere where if you enter that code it shows the home mooring but I cant remember where.

 

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19 hours ago, colmac said:

I think I have resolved the situation after a discussion with a fellow moorer.  Instead of entering Stourport on the find mooring bit I entered Limekiln moorings ( private ) and it has accepted this so the problem seems to be sorted. However, I have been around large organisations for long enough to know that life is never that simple so will watch this space.

Could cause a problem if the Limekiln Moorings owner gets asked who moors there ...

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On 1/11/2018 at 20:19, Alan de Enfield said:

Boaters WITH a home mooring have to be in a different 'place' every 14 days. but, can go from A to B to A to B to A to ..............

Whilst boaters WITHOUT a home mooring have to be in a different 'place' every 14 days and must go from A to B to C to D to E ........

 

Extract from HHJ Halbert (the Judge in the case of C&RT Vs Mayers)

6:3 There are clear anomalies in both positions, CRT clearly regard the occupation of moorings by permanently residential boat owners who do not move very much as a significant problem (see paragraphs 3.5 and 3.6 above). However, neither the statutory regime in subsection 17(3) nor the guidelines can deal with this problem. A boat which has a home mooring is not required to be “bona fide” used for navigation throughout the period of the licence, but neither is it required to ever use its home mooring. The act requires that the mooring is available, it does not say it must be used. The guidelines also have this effect. The boat is still subject to the restriction that it must not stay in the same place for more than 14 days but there is nothing whatever to stop it being shuffled between two locations quite close together provided they are far enough apart to constitute different places. If those who are causing the overcrowding at popular spots have home moorings anywhere in the country the present regime cannot control their overuse of the popular spots. Such an owner could cruise to and fro along the Kennet & Avon canal near Bristol and the home mooring could be in Birmingham and totally unused.

 

I’m sure you’re right but which bit of legislation requires boaters with a home mooring to move every 14 days when cruising?

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On 1/11/2018 at 19:09, alvicchas1 said:

But don't people with moorings have to follow the "14 day rule" when cruising?

What 14 day rule?

Or to put it another way, basically there's two "14 day" rules. One is written into legislation which requires CCers to move every 14 days max (paraphrased); the other applies to all and is the suggested max mooring time on an unsigned mooring, which is in the T&Cs.

So its more a case of, you have to follow a 14 day rule; and not the 14 day rule.

And then you'll get people who say that the T&Cs aren't legally binding, so you can ignore them.

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20 minutes ago, Paul C said:

What 14 day rule?

Or to put it another way, basically there's two "14 day" rules. One is written into legislation which requires CCers to move every 14 days max (paraphrased); the other applies to all and is the suggested max mooring time on an unsigned mooring, which is in the T&Cs.

So its more a case of, you have to follow a 14 day rule; and not the 14 day rule.

And then you'll get people who say that the T&Cs aren't legally binding, so you can ignore them.

I seem to recall that when the legislation was written, everyone had to have a home mooring, so the 14 day rule applied to everyone.  When the CC rules were brought in, it was specified that they had to be on a cruise, and that's when the definition of "place" because crucial and a bone of contention ever since, because it's needed to define what a cruise is, apart from just hanging about in a three mile zone without paying for a home mooring.  It didn't matter much thirty years ago because there weren't that many people living on boats and BW didn't care about us very much anyway as long as we kept quiet and caused no bother.

With luck Nigel will be along some time to remind us yet again about the facts...

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There is no legislative right for a boat WITH a home mooring to moor on the cut, although there is a legislative right for boaters WITHOUT a home mooring to moor for up to 14 days (or less as signed otherwise)

BW / C&RT have granted 'permissive rights' for HMers to moor for up to 14 days (unless etc etc.) if they so wish this grant could be extended to 28 days, reduced to 7 days, or removed all together - although it may be considered to be impracticable to expect boaters to travel continuously without ever stopping to sleep, eat, etc.

 

I am sure Nigel Moore could make a better job of explaining it (he has done in the past but I cannot find it amongst his posts)

 

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3 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

and that's when the definition of "place" because crucial and a bone of contention ever since

Mr Justice Lewis has stated his interpretation of 'place', and that you cannot in the same paragraph have a word with two meanings - he suggested that if 'place' for a HMer was a 'place' the size of the boat, then 'place' for a CCer should mean the same.

Mr Justice Lewis also observed that ‘Place’ could be as small as an individual boat length, by stating that the mooring or other ‘place’ to keep a boat required by s.17(3)(c)(i) has the same meaning as the ‘place’...........

He also suggested :

 “An occasional trip down to the Dog and Duck” might very well be bona fide navigation whether this was from a marina or from a towpath spot" 

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8 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

There is no legislative right for a boat WITH a home mooring to moor on the cut...........

That's a bit upside down. Very broadly speaking, in the UK legal system, you don't need "legal permission" to do anything. It works the other way round, there needs to exist legislation which forbids you doing something spelled out in that legislation. And without (for home moorers) something to this effect in the 1995 Waterways act or other waterways-specific legislation, there doesn't seem to be much that CRT or another prosecutor could hang a legal case onto. I guess, they could try a "trespass" case but it would be a pretty simple defence to say that permission to moor is implied, certainly within CRT's own T&Cs, or by convention or tradition over a number of years anyway. So I couldn't see that having legs. It might have legs if the boater were to do something completely unreasonable - like dump a boat, for ever, with no licence - but there's other legislation to deal with these issues, so it is worth restricting the application of any potential legislation to those who hold a current/valid licence. Then the time period might be an area of disagreement/discussion, and CRT (or another) might try to construct a case that 14 days is reasonable but longer is not. Its certainly much easier, logistically, for CRT to let a licence expire then remove a boat for no licence, than actually pursue a simple "overstay" case legally.

8 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Mr Justice Lewis has stated his interpretation of 'place', and that you cannot in the same paragraph have a word with two meanings - he suggested that if 'place' for a HMer was a 'place' the size of the boat, then 'place' for a CCer should mean the same.

Mr Justice Lewis also observed that ‘Place’ could be as small as an individual boat length, by stating that the mooring or other ‘place’ to keep a boat required by s.17(3)(c)(i) has the same meaning as the ‘place’...........

He also suggested :

 “An occasional trip down to the Dog and Duck” might very well be bona fide navigation whether this was from a marina or from a towpath spot" 

His opinion is legally meaningless because it was made in a county court, which cannot set a precedent. So, any other judge's (slightly different) opinion in any other case, would be of equal or greater weight.

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