CRT Licensing Review final report

[TheBiscuits]

3 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

Because the bigger one occupies more space - sorry if that wasn't clear.

That is my point about the current bandings.  A 30' boat licence is not half the price of a 60' boat licence.

[Machpoint005]

1 minute ago, TheBiscuits said:

That is my point about the current bandings.  A 30' boat licence is not half the price of a 60' boat licence.

Let's say a licence for a 30ft boat is £500 and for a 60ft boat £750.

The 30 footer pays £250 for the infrastructure and £250 for the space it occupies on the cut.

The 60 footer pays £250 for the infrastructure and £500 for the double amount of space it occupies.

That's the principle anyway.

 

Does it annoy anyone else that the forum spall chucker can't spell "licence" in UK English? It gets "licensing" right though.

[TheBiscuits]

3 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

Let's say a licence for a 30ft boat is £500 and for a 60ft boat £750.

The 30 footer pays £250 for the infrastructure and £250 for the space it occupies on the cut.

The 60 footer pays £250 for the infrastructure and £500 for the double amount of space it occupies.

That's the principle anyway.

So what would you charge a 15' boat in that example?

4 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

Does it annoy anyone else that the forum spall chucker can't spell "licence" in UK English? It gets "licensing" right though.

Is there a spell check on the forum?  Is it not your browser that has it?

[Movin' on]

I guess this will keep most people happy and also cover the likely period until the EA merger when it will all change again when whatever charging cost base is used will be based on square footage which IMHO has always felt like the right way to do it.

[Detling]

Thought the EA merger sank last year, is someone going to salvage it?

[TheBiscuits]

I was being a bit tongue in cheek with my earlier suggestion of surcharging boat lengths over 30' but it appears that the average boat length on CRT waters is indeed around 30'.

From the report:

The Trust raises approximately £20m per annum from boat licensing from around 33,000 boating customers who pay an average of just over £600 for an annual licence to navigate on the Trust’s waterways.

The prompt payment price for a 30' boat is £601.62, and apparently 75% of boaters use the prompt payment discount.

Admittedly the rivers-only discount skews these figures by an unspecified number of boats.

[TheBiscuits]

The widebeam surcharge at the levels set seems to encourage shorter semi-fat boats to be built.

Even when the full changes kick in in a few years time, it will still be cheaper to licence a 50' x 10'6" boat than a 60' x 7' boat.

 

[BruceinSanity]

1 hour ago, Machpoint005 said:

No great complaints from me -- it could have been so much worse.

Same here, though the always weird justification about making the system simpler and more comprehensible is completely out of the window. Apart from losing the one day licence, all the changes increase the complexity of the system, whether fee bands, now two dimensional, or the prompt payment discount, soon to be in two halves.

Holding the licence fee at current levels for 2019 is good, though, so that the entire increase will be the loss of half the PPD.

[MHS]

13 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

The widebeam surcharge at the levels set seems to encourage shorter semi-fat boats to be built.

Even when the full changes kick in in a few years time, it will still be cheaper to licence a 50' x 10'6" boat than a 60' x 7' boat.

 

But they will be unable to use as much of the network, so maybe that’s fair enough?

[Bromleyxphil]

Looks fair to me, another quango not ruffling enough feathers to get itself closed down but trying to make enough change to justify its continuing existence.

[mrsmelly]

1 hour ago, TheBiscuits said:

Yes, especially boat shaped ones rather than bathtub shaped ones.

I have never understood exactly why the licence on a 70' boat is only twice the licence fee of an 16' boat though.

Maybe now we have the width surcharge principle it could be extended to length in later years.

0-30' boat - no surcharge.

30'-50' boat - 10% surcharge

50'+ boat - 20% surcharge.

Perhaps there could be a surcharge on anything tiny at under 65 feet for getting in the way of proper boats? 

[rusty69]

5 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

Perhaps there could be a surcharge on anything tiny at under 65 feet for getting in the way of proper boats? 

Thinner I reckon, Bring it on

[furnessvale]

1 hour ago, Naughty Cal said:

We need to lose a ft of width from ours before April 2019

A fast entry into your nearest narrow lock should sort that one!

George

[mrsmelly]

Its no big deal then after all. They could have whacked proper beamed boats with a much bigger surcharge but I suppose there are quite a lot of them so CART will still gain some considerable income and it would have been unfair to penalise people who buy sensible beamed boats especialy as I may well buy one again someday 

[furnessvale]

1 hour ago, TheBiscuits said:

I was sorry to see that the width surcharges start at 7'1" and not at 6'11"

Just imagine the screams from the historic boaters

 

You do know that the standard boat width was 7' 0.5" before BW decided to save maintenance money by declaring the "new" standard would be 6' 10".  Now old working boats, and any boats built before the standard was changed,  get stuck at various locations where BW/CRT saved money!

How I will laugh when the next money saving exercise declares a "new" standard width of 6' 8"!

George

[Machpoint005]

1 hour ago, TheBiscuits said:

So what would you charge a 15' boat in that example?

Is there a spell check on the forum?  Is it not your browser that has it?

A 15 ft boat would be £250 plus half of £250, so £375.

Thanks for the spellchecker hint -- both the forum software and Firefox have been updated since I last looked, and my Firefox language is now real English. 

[TheBiscuits]

31 minutes ago, furnessvale said:

You do know that the standard boat width was 7' 0.5" before BW decided to save maintenance money by declaring the "new" standard would be 6' 10".  Now old working boats, and any boats built before the standard was changed,  get stuck at various locations where BW/CRT saved money!

How I will laugh when the next money saving exercise declares a "new" standard width of 6' 8"!

George

The standard working boats up here on the L&L were a little wider than 7' 1/2", but I take your point.

Ribble was told a couple of years ago that the Leeds Liverpool was never designed for such a big boat, which raised the question of which canal the CRT twonk thought Leeds Liverpool short boats were supposed to be on!

I thought the new standard 6'10" was to allow room for those annoying pipe fenders - if we go to 6'8" they'll all start using balloon fenders instead! 

 

[b0atman]

2 hours ago, Naughty Cal said:

We need to lose a ft of width from ours before April 2019

your already on a saver surely River Licence only cheap as chips with a lot of manned locks.

[peterboat]

So it was a pack of lies all along! It was supposed to be revenue neutral and it isnt and it was supposed to make the system easier to administer and again it isnt! So we now know how to tell if CRT are lying......................their lips are moving

[MtB]

7 minutes ago, peterboat said:

So it was a pack of lies all along! It was supposed to be revenue neutral and it isnt and it was supposed to make the system easier to administer and again it isnt! So we now know how to tell if CRT are lying......................their lips are moving

 

Does a corporate body like CRT actually have lips then?

Or a soul?

[jddevel]

I`ve just responded to their email as follows.:

The question I must ask is whilst a revenue raiser for CRT what benefit is there for anyone paying annually online. It would appear that this will indirectly be penalized. PLUS as Road fund licensing has discovered contrary to their advice it has led to increase costs in monitoring and a reduction in taxed vehicles. I consider your approach will give you no long term revenue benefit. I hope I`m wrong.

I recognize funds have to be raised but as a true cynic and old fart I look at most - I`ll call them institutes- as being overstaffed and management top heavy. Councils, civil servants etc. But as I comment I`m a retired self employed cynic. 

 

[WJM]

While you are all focussing on the new width charges, did anyone notice the abolition of Continuous Cruising licenses?!

[peterboat]

1 minute ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Does a corporate body like CRT actually have lips then?

Or a soul?

It has lying words though

[Alan de Enfield]

7 minutes ago, WJM said:

While you are all focussing on the new width charges, did anyone notice the abolition of Continuous Cruising licenses?!

No.

[TheBiscuits]

4 minutes ago, WJM said:

While you are all focussing on the new width charges, did anyone notice the abolition of Continuous Cruising licenses?!

How do you make that up?

CRT specifically stated that despite a majority of responses being in favour of charging more for "boaters without a home mooring" they have not altered licence prices for these.  They are going to look at "options" for busiest waterways such as in London and Bath, which probably means either a congestion charge or a no return within x days type of policy.

 

From the report:

Licence considerations in respect of mooring status

2.7 A majority indicated they would support a change to take mooring status into account as part of the licensing system. However, there were heavily polarised views with a significant number arguing strongly against this, stating that any such distinction would be highly divisive. This issue was also linked by respondents to the growing congestion on the Trust’s busiest waterways in London and around Bath where the growing numbers of liveaboard boaters without a home mooring reflects the availability and economics of housing in such costly cities.

2.8 Notwithstanding the majority in favour of a change, the Trust does not propose to introduce a different licence fee for boats without a home mooring. Our intention is to take forward a further stage of work to look at options that would address the growing use of canals in London and other areas by boats without a home mooring and how to develop a fair means of reflecting the significant benefit gained by such use.

13 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

Does a corporate body like CRT actually have lips then?

Or a soul?

I have heard of a corporate body being called "a soul" but I'm not sure that is the correct spelling.