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CRT Licensing Review final report


TheBiscuits

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1 minute ago, Naughty Cal said:

98% of the boats in our marina are over 7ft wide. They will all incur extra charges as a result of this hash up of a licensing "improvement" as well as losing at least half of the prompt payment discount. 

Yes but to counter that, 100% of the boats in our marina are narrowboats, and I suspect there are more narrowboats on the CRT system as a whole than there are wide boats.  Some form of additional charge for wider boats was inevitable I feel. 

The controversial thing is the reduction in the prompt payment discount.  I presume the prompt payment discount was originally introduced to improve the percentage of boats licenced, I guess that goal has been achieved.  Making it tied at least in part to use of the online system seems a good idea as that reflects that a lot of the cost to CRT is in providing a licence service over the phone, and more use of the online system you could see as the next objective.  Does not mean the the overall discount should have been reduced though.

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4 minutes ago, john6767 said:

The controversial thing is the reduction in the prompt payment discount.  I presume the prompt payment discount was originally introduced to improve the percentage of boats licenced, I guess that goal has been achieved.  Making it tied at least in part to use of the online system seems a good idea as that reflects that a lot of the cost to CRT is in providing a licence service over the phone, and more use of the online system you could see as the next objective.  Does not mean the the overall discount should have been reduced though.

I agree with your thoughts, but the level of the 10% discount has been too high for years.  It has been appreciated by 75% of us, but it is not realistic to offer 10% for prompt payment at current interest rates.

When it was introduced, you could be getting 5% or 6% on cash in the bank, so it needed to be set high enough to get people using it.

4% above most cash savings now would be around 5% - which is exactly where the discount is going to be in 2019.

I also agree that stopping it being a "discount for the rich" and linking it to cost savings for CRT makes perfect sense.

 

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31 minutes ago, john6767 said:

 

The controversial thing is the reduction in the prompt payment discount.  I presume the prompt payment discount was originally introduced to improve the percentage of boats licenced, 

It could also be called a "late payment surcharge" - whether that would encourage more people to pay up on time (and thereby avoid CART having to chase them) I am not sure.

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7 minutes ago, Athy said:

It could also be called a "late payment surcharge" - whether that would encourage more people to pay up on time (and thereby avoid CART having to chase them) I am not sure.

There already is one of them - it's a flat rate £150 on top of the full price of the licence if you pay more than a month late.

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as I understand it CRT was one of the few navigation authorities that paid no attention to the width of a vessel in regard of licensing charges with others taking account of it either by bands or by use of pricing by square metre.

It has always seemed inevitable that CRT's pricing structure would change in line with changes to the types of vessels in use on the waterways especially when we see tricks that include welding two boats together breasted up to get them qualified as a single vessel thereby reducing their license cost by up to 50% (depending on whether the 2nd vessel was an unpowered butty), then there is the age old argument about a pair of narrowboats costing significantly more to license than a widebeam of the same length despite them taking up the same space in the water.

in all honesty I expected CRT to change over to a pricing scheme similar to that used by the EA on the Thames with similar discounts applied for unpowered craft, electric propulsion or historic craft

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6 minutes ago, Geoff said:

Does the fishing licence increase with the length of you rod??

No, but a 3-rod licence costs half as much again as a 2-rod licence.

So it's the width of your bag that counts :P

 

Ooh and that nearly doubles if you want to go play on the nice rivers instead of on the canals! (salmon & sea trout licence)

 

Edited by TheBiscuits
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16 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

There already is one of them - it's a flat rate £150 on top of the full price of the licence if you pay more than a month late.

Ah, that'll be the late late payment surcharge surcharge.

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16 hours ago, furnessvale said:

Miles per gallon is an example of a conversion requiring two stages.

I can cope with one conversion, say miles to kms, or gallons to litres.  As soon as you require me to incorporate both in a single transaction the difficulty is MORE than doubled.  An example which I need to use frequently is ton/mile into tonne/km (in relation to freight movement).  Does my head in.

Do others think the same?

George

Mpg has always struck me as a particularly illogical measurement, since the more fuel you use, the lower the number.

As for converting ton/mile into tonne/km it's only a single figure conversion factor, so why is it so difficult? I can remember converting air volume flow rates to and from cfm, litres/sec and m³/h and it didn't cause any problems. If we had all gone entirely metric in 1971 there would have been no problem because the stubborn imperialists would have died off. 

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3 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

Mpg has always struck me as a particularly illogical measurement, since the more fuel you use, the lower the number.

As for converting ton/mile into tonne/km it's only a single figure conversion factor, so why is it so difficult? I can remember converting air volume flow rates to and from cfm, litres/sec and m³/h and it didn't cause any problems. If we had all gone entirely metric in 1971 there would have been no problem because the stubborn imperialists would have died off. 

Tons and tonnes are different but I agree if approximations are good enough that factor can be ignored.

George

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12 minutes ago, furnessvale said:

Tons and tonnes are different but I agree if approximations are good enough that factor can be ignored.

George

According to my reckoning, 1 tonne/km = 0.5637 ton/mile, so when converting from imperial to metric you should get a number about 77% bigger? (1 ton/mile = 1.774 tonne/km).

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1 hour ago, TheBiscuits said:

I agree with your thoughts, but the level of the 10% discount has been too high for years.  It has been appreciated by 75% of us, but it is not realistic to offer 10% for prompt payment at current interest rates.

When it was introduced, you could be getting 5% or 6% on cash in the bank, so it needed to be set high enough to get people using it.

4% above most cash savings now would be around 5% - which is exactly where the discount is going to be in 2019.

I also agree that stopping it being a "discount for the rich" and linking it to cost savings for CRT makes perfect sense.

 

But what cost savings are C&RT going to actually see - unless by everyone doing everything 'on-line' C&RT can reduce the head count then there will be no costs saving.

There are far, far to many 'internal empires' being built as it is, what are those admin people that 'did' licences now going to do with themselves ?

C&RT management would not survive very long in the commercial world.

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2 hours ago, john6767 said:

Yes but to counter that, 100% of the boats in our marina are narrowboats, and I suspect there are more narrowboats on the CRT system as a whole than there are wide boats.  Some form of additional charge for wider boats was inevitable I feel. 

The controversial thing is the reduction in the prompt payment discount.  I presume the prompt payment discount was originally introduced to improve the percentage of boats licenced, I guess that goal has been achieved.  Making it tied at least in part to use of the online system seems a good idea as that reflects that a lot of the cost to CRT is in providing a licence service over the phone, and more use of the online system you could see as the next objective.  Does not mean the the overall discount should have been reduced though.

And even they will see an increase in licence fees.

There are no winners in this shake up other then the coffers at CRT.

I wonder where this extra licence revenue will end up?

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2 hours ago, alan_fincher said:

What am I missing?  It says the prepay discount is reducing to 5% next year.

So shouldn't your second sum be...

£600 average licence fee this year plus no inflation-based rise BECAUSE IT'S NOT HAPPENING minus 5% prompt payment discount = £570 to pay next year?

So if someone currently gets prompt payment discount. the reduction in that more than wipes out the inflationary increase.

I think this is not cost neutral even to narrow beam boat owners.

Where am I wrong?

 

Oops. My mistake - I originally did my sums (correctly!) based on a £1000 fee, then hastily changed it to something more in line with what most people pay and messed up a step. Teach me.

 

Edited by magictime
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18 minutes ago, Allan(nb Albert) said:

So having told NAG twice that any changes will be revenue neutral, albeit saying there will be winners and losers, can anyone state that they will be better off financially?

Any boater who can not afford to prepay to get the 10% discount will be better off in 2019, so around 8,000 boaters.

Actually, that would make a great article for you Allan.

"CRT reduce the discount for their richer customers and do not increase fees for their poorer ones."

Can we expect to see that as a writeup anytime soon?

Edited by TheBiscuits
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7 hours ago, TheBiscuits said:

Any boater who can not afford to prepay to get the 10% discount will be better off in 2019, so around 8,000 boaters.

Actually, that would make a great article for you Allan.

"CRT reduce the discount for their richer customers and do not increase fees for their poorer ones."

Can we expect to see that as a writeup anytime soon?

That is a really interesting point.  Is that really the case that roughly 25% of licence holders do not take advantage of the prompt payment discount?  If that is the case then understanding why they do not sounds quite important.  So do you not get the prompt payment discount if you pay by monthly direct debit, if that is the case then your point is a good one as you would think the people paying monthly and giving up the discount would be those on small regular incomes, like a pension.  I can’t think of another reason that you would give up a 10% discount.

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2 minutes ago, john6767 said:

That is a really interesting point.  Is that really the case that roughly 25% of licence holders do not take advantage of the prompt payment discount?  If that is the case then understanding why they do not sounds quite important.  So do you not get the prompt payment discount if you pay by monthly direct debit, if that is the case then your point is a good one as you would think the people paying monthly and giving up the discount would be those on small regular incomes, like a pension.  I can’t think of another reason that you would give up a 10% discount.

I couldn't afford the lump sum payment when I bought my boat and that stayed the same for 10 years,  although I now can the payment comes at MOT and car tax time, plus a couple of other biggish outgoings and I would rather keep a buffer of cash, plus I rather like the convenience of a monthly direct debit.

There you go, 1 answer as to why :)

 

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