Boaters group recognised by CRT

[b0atman]

CRT seemed to consider IWA,RBOA etc as representative of boaters.I do not know the figures of membership but believe them to be a minority representation of boaters .

CRT set up a committee of people which we voted for I personally have never seen minutes of meetings yet get the Damian Kemp news email.

The early days IWA would have been a good pressure group for boaters but have lost their way i believe .

Groups that are in place do not seem to be co-ordinating and lobbying Parliament for a voice which is the only way forward.

CWDF and the FB sites have lots of boater members ok duplicated in many cases but there is no voice in CRTs ear from them from the Administration of any of them.

I believe that the Boating side will lose out in the long term .

The groups like Sustrans seem to have more input than any of us.

[alan_fincher]

31 minutes ago, b0atman said:

CRT set up a committee of people which we voted for I personally have never seen minutes of meetings yet get the Damian Kemp news email.

 

The only thing that CRT have let you vote for as a boat owener is the boating representatives on CRT Council.

 

These are not "a committee of people" as such, because there are only four of them in a Council of circa 30, so boating is only a very small part of the Council's remit.

 

It is not usually hard to find the minutes, unless they are tardy in publishing them - an example here.......

 

https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/media/original/34309-13th-council-meeting-and-5th-agm-minutes-21-september-2017.pdf?v=328b21

 

Both Stella Ridgeway and Andy Tidy, (both sometimes members on CWDF) regularly publish their own independent view of Council proceedings, and are hugely more visible than the 4 IWA "grandees" who got themselves elected as the first tranche of boater reps.

 

As an aside I note that the only one of the original 4 IWA members who got re-elected on the second round of boater reps, (Vaughan Welch) was the only one absent in the minutes listed above -I've no idea if that's a trend butb it wouldn't surprise me.

 

Vaughan Welch is apparently a member on here, but doesn't declare himself as such, and has in the past had perfetly true observations I have made about him in posts taken down.  I guess it may happen again, but if he is your elected rep, perhaps he should make himself public on here, as others have done?

 

EDITED TO ADD:

An example on CWDF of Stella Ridgeway sharing her own take on Council proceedings.....

 

 

 

Edited June 17, 2018 by alan_fincher

[Teasel]

I think a co-ordinated boaters group would be a good idea at the moment, but the problem is that groups seem to have directly opposing interests at the moment - the RBOA and the IWA have both said that they want the 'range' required of continuous cruisers extended to up to something like 300 miles, and that they cannot see that having connections to one area can be compatible with the cc lifestyle etc.. Many ccers have kids in school or jobs.. The only way I can see that a group could represent all boaters would be to focus solely on maintenance and infrastructure-  and stay out of all those political issues as far as possible. Although attention to those issues may well alleviate some of the political stuff in my view.

[Alan de Enfield]

10 minutes ago, Teasel said:

Many ccers have kids in school or jobs.

If they are old enough to have jobs, kick 'em out and let 'em fend for themselves, allowing you to get on with CCing.

[David Schweizer]

4 hours ago, b0atman said:

CRT seemed to consider IWA,RBOA etc as representative of boaters.I do not know the figures of membership but believe them to be a minority representation of boaters .

CRT set up a committee of people which we voted for I personally have never seen minutes of meetings yet get the Damian Kemp news email.

The early days IWA would have been a good pressure group for boaters but have lost their way i believe .

Groups that are in place do not seem to be co-ordinating and lobbying Parliament for a voice which is the only way forward.

CWDF and the FB sites have lots of boater members ok duplicated in many cases but there is no voice in CRTs ear from them from the Administration of any of them.

I believe that the Boating side will lose out in the long term .

The groups like Sustrans seem to have more input than any of us.

What happened to NABO?  In BW's days their view was sought on various issues, on a regular basis

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, David Schweizer said:

What happened to NABO?  In BW's days their view was sought on various issues, on a regular basis

I see a lot of NABO stickers but that's as far as it goes. Assumed it was a boating group that no longer exists.

[alan_fincher]

2 minutes ago, David Schweizer said:

What happened to NABO?  In BW's days their view was sought on various issues, on a regular basis

NABO is very much still alive.

Their current chair and deputy chair post on here.

However I get the impression CRT has regularly marginalised them in boating related matters, and their input to certain debates often seems to be ignored.

 

I will admit though that for various reasons I allowed my membership to lapse a few yeras back, (I certainly didn't see eye to eye with them on everything), so perhaps Stella or Mark can comment on current relations between CRT and NABO.

NABO are the only ones that have any hope or representing a large spectrum of boaters IMO - I am very disappointed with the lines taken by RBOA on many boating matters these days.

[David Schweizer]

1 hour ago, alan_fincher said:

NABO is very much still alive.

Their current chair and deputy chair post on here.

However I get the impression CRT has regularly marginalised them in boating related matters, and their input to certain debates often seems to be ignored.

 

I will admit though that for various reasons I allowed my membership to lapse a few yeras back, (I certainly didn't see eye to eye with them on everything), so perhaps Stella or Mark can comment on current relations between CRT and NABO.

NABO are the only ones that have any hope or representing a large spectrum of boaters IMO - I am very disappointed with the lines taken by RBOA on many boating matters these days.

 

Well as their name suggests, they are only engaged in promoting the interests of people who live on boats, so hardly a good cross section of boaters.

[alan_fincher]

1 minute ago, David Schweizer said:

 

Well as their name suggests, they are only engaged in promoting the interests of people who live on boats, so hardly a good cross section of boaters.

 

It's worse than that - they really do only seem to be interested in promoting the interests of residential boaters that live on a permanent mooring.

 

They are certainly not doing or saying things that will go down well with those who live aboard, but have no permanent mooring.

[Teasel]

6 minutes ago, David Schweizer said:

Well as their name suggests, they are only engaged in promoting the interests of people who live on boats, so hardly a good cross section of boaters.

This is a quote from their policy on continuous cruisers:

 

RBOA Chairman, Alan Wildman, submits that “Irrespective of the uncertainty emanating from the 1995 Act, continuous cruising should apply to boaters who have a primary intent to cruise extensively around the inland waterways. In most cases this will not be compatible with having lifestyle connections with one place – for example: education of children, employment or health needs. 

 

As Alan says, they don't represent most residential boaters either. 

 

You can find the whole thing here - https://www.rboa.org.uk/continuous-cruising-a-new-approach-from-the-rboa/

Edited June 17, 2018 by Teasel

[b0atman]

RBOA as it says Residential with planning permission moorings .A live aboard is not necessarily a CCer yet they do not push to enlighten marinas or councils that there exists a legal right to be a long term moorer without requiring planning permission.

[Alan de Enfield]

10 minutes ago, Teasel said:

This is a quote from their policy on continuous cruisers:

 

RBOA Chairman, Alan Wildman, submits that “Irrespective of the uncertainty emanating from the 1995 Act, continuous cruising should apply to boaters who have a primary intent to cruise extensively around the inland waterways. In most cases this will not be compatible with having lifestyle connections with one place – for example: education of children, employment or health needs. 

 

As Alan says, they don't represent most residential boaters either. 

 

You can find the whole thing here - https://www.rboa.org.uk/continuous-cruising-a-new-approach-from-the-rboa/

Which is pretty much lifted directly from C&RTs pronouncements on the subject.

 

Interesting response from C&RT on the 'schooling' question :

 

What about families – isn’t it difficult for those with kids to continuously cruise?
The Trust understands that boaters with children of school age may have more of a need to stay in one area close to a child’s nursery or school.

In general we don’t believe that we can simply waive our licence requirements (i.e. to navigate throughout the licence period) by allowing all parents with school-aged children to remain permanently in the area of the school, given that their children may attend a particular school for many years. The choice to be on a boat without a home mooring being at the individual’s discretion.

 

Edited June 17, 2018 by Alan de Enfield

[Teasel]

4 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Which is pretty much lifted directly from C&RTs pronouncements on the subject.

I'm not sure which way round it is actually. I get the impression CRT give a lot of weight to the views of the IWA and the RBOA

[mrsmelly]

Speaking as someone who has both had moorings and cced as a full time liveaboard for  quite a few years now I have never joined or indeed researched any of the clubs out there though what bit I have read it seems non of them actualy sees eye to eye with all boating types. Different clubs persuing different ideals fragments the size of the voice. One club set up quite recently seems to have been commisioned just to challenge the ccing rules for instance. Would setting up a new club with a collective approach to matters troubling different boaters work? Somehow I doubt it.

[alan_fincher]

6 minutes ago, Teasel said:

I'm not sure which way round it is actually. I get the impression CRT give a lot of weight to the views of the IWA and the RBOA

I think CRT (and BW before them) have always taken a fairly firm line that a job at a fixed location, or children being schooled at one, is incompatible with their requirements for those without a home mooring.

 

In general they have, over the years, actually relaxed their written interpretation of what the 1995 act requires of such boaters, but not to the extent of conceding that it s viable to have a job or children in school and still comply.

 

However the 1995 act itself does't rule it out, of course, so ultimately it comes down yet again to testing the actual meaning of "bona fide for navigation", in court, if it comes down to it.

My personal view is that BW are highly culpable in the mess we have ended up with.  By not enforcing any interpretation they have had, over many years, other than for a small subset of what they consider the worst offenders, by inference they have more or less condoned for many years the cruising patterns, (or lack of them!) that many people in this situation relied on.  It is well known that a friendly chat with your local enforcement officer would give an "unofficial" view of what they would let you get away with, and that that generaly fell far short of what is implied in the written guidelines.

 

Hence many people are in the situation they now are, because CRT now see as a problem exactly the same situation as was an accepted norm for many years

 

Whatever you think about it, (and clearly boaters disagree wildly on this topic), my view is that a good boating association should be prepared to protect the interests of people who were never considered a problem in the past, but now are for no other reason than CRT have heavily shifted the goalposts.

[howardang]

2 hours ago, David Schweizer said:

What happened to NABO?  In BW's days their view was sought on various issues, on a regular basis

Very much alive and kicking; here is a link to the web site for more info.

 

https://nabo.org.uk/

 

Howard

[Chewbacka]

6 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

I think CRT (and BW before them) have always taken a fairly firm line that a job at a fixed location, or children being schooled at one, is incompatible with their requirements for those without a home mooring.

 

In general they have, over the years, actually relaxed their written interpretation of what the 1995 act requires of such boaters, but not to the extent of conceding that it s viable to have a job or children in school and still comply.

 

However the 1995 act itself does't rule it out, of course, so ultimately it comes down yet again to testing the actual meaning of "bona fide for navigation", in court, if it comes down to it.

My personal view is that BW are highly culpable in the mess we have ended up with.  By not enforcing any interpretation they have had, over many years, other than for a small subset of what they consider the worst offenders, by inference they have more or less condoned for many years the cruising patterns, (or lack of them!) that many people in this situation relied on.  It is well known that a friendly chat with your local enforcement officer would give an "unofficial" view of what they would let you get away with, and that that generaly fell far short of what is implied in the written guidelines.

 

Hence many people are in the situation they now are, because CRT now see as a problem exactly the same situation as was an accepted norm for many years

 

Whatever you think about it, (and clearly boaters disagree wildly on this topic), my view is that a good boating association should be prepared to protect the interests of people who were never considered a problem in the past, but now are for no other reason than CRT have heavily shifted the goalposts.

You are correct, but crt have been pushed into action because of the greatly increasing numbers in the hot spots.  Additionally allowing local interpretations of the requirements based on numbers mooring etc leaves crt open to claims of discrimination, so now everyone must be treated the same.

[Teasel]

3 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

By not enforcing any interpretation they have had, over many years, other than for a small subset of what they consider the worst offenders,

I think part of the issue has also been that BW didn't enforce the 14 day rule for a long time. Instead of enforcing that, they started bringing in guidance about cruising range etc.. the survey they put out in 2002 'Fair Play For All' did use the 'children in schools' issue as a way of differentiating between 'legitimate' and 'illegitimate' ccers, and led to the Draft Mooring Guidance (or similar named) with the 120 different lock miles every 3 months idea - very bad. The 2004 guidance was the first official 'interpretation' of the BW Act as far as I know. That was relaxed after the Davies case - to take out the 'progressive journey' bit. 

 

It's worth bearing in mind that the IWA existed 20 years before the BWB did, and have always favoured leisure boating over liveaboards. Just before the BW Bill in 1990 there was a report from the IWAAC which had submissions from IWA in it, and talked about 'unsightly, unhygienic' residential boats. The relationship between IWA and BWB is very long standing, and has had a direct impact on the legislation for the waterways - the '95 Act also provided a power for local authorities to help fund 'any person (or organisation) to restore waterways for amenity purposes, but despite the continuous use of the waterways by residential boats since the turn of the 18th century, liveaboards have been left out of the modern law and policy. There was provision for boat dwellers in social policy up until 1957, when they decided there was no point carrying on with it. I think a bit of foresight back then might have helped! 

 

14 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

a good boating association should be prepared to protect the interests of people who were never considered a problem in the past, but now are for no other reason than CRT have heavily shifted the goalposts.

Completely agree with this - CRT have explicitly acknowledged that their policy will affect people whose established lifestyles will be fundamentally threatened by it, and gone ahead regardless. 

 

[Alan de Enfield]

33 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

My personal view is that BW are highly culpable in the mess we have ended up with.  By not enforcing any interpretation they have had, over many years, other than for a small subset of what they consider the worst offenders, by inference they have more or less condoned for many years the cruising patterns, (or lack of them!) that many people in this situation relied on.  It is well known that a friendly chat with your local enforcement officer would give an "unofficial" view of what they would let you get away with, and that that generaly fell far short of what is implied in the written guidelines.

 

The response to that question :

 

What about the people who have got used to a certain way of life?

While we are not changing any rules, we are being more proactive in telling people when we are concerned. We do recognise that in some areas communities have evolved that may not cruise in a way that meets our requirements, but it can’t be one rule for some and another for the others and we have to enforce consistently. That said, we do treat each case uniquely and our team works hard to find solutions. Most of the work we do is talking to boaters and sorting out problems early. In many cases making some small adjustments to a cruising pattern is enough to meet our Guidance, while in other cases taking up a home mooring may be more suitable.

[Paul C]

31 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

Speaking as someone who has both had moorings and cced as a full time liveaboard for  quite a few years now I have never joined or indeed researched any of the clubs out there though what bit I have read it seems non of them actualy sees eye to eye with all boating types. Different clubs persuing different ideals fragments the size of the voice. One club set up quite recently seems to have been commisioned just to challenge the ccing rules for instance. Would setting up a new club with a collective approach to matters troubling different boaters work? Somehow I doubt it.

Surely, any group would be daft not to represent the views of its members, which might not necessarily align with all boaters. Given the diversity of different kinds of boating, it would be a significant task to be able to represent the views of all its members/boaters without somewhat diluting that representation along the way. Thus, we have groups such as RBOA which choose not to try represent all boater, but a subset of them.

 

I would be interested if any other than IWA, RBOA, NABO have a mandate - in other words, they have demonstrably democratic elections for the members who administer/run the organisation. I think there's one other, an association of cruising clubs? But I can't think of any other. Unless something radical has changed (and they've been too busy to update their website) NBTA are not democratic and have no mandate, ie they don't hold elections for positions as such, but are formed by a group of like-minded people simply joining up informally and inviting others to join (and give them money via donations).

 

I am not sure if CRT should necessarily give any more weight to a group with no mandate, over & above the voice of individual boaters.

[Mike Todd]

11 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

The response to that question :

 

What about the people who have got used to a certain way of life?

While we are not changing any rules, we are being more proactive in telling people when we are concerned. We do recognise that in some areas communities have evolved that may not cruise in a way that meets our requirements, but it can’t be one rule for some and another for the others and we have to enforce consistently. That said, we do treat each case uniquely and our team works hard to find solutions. Most of the work we do is talking to boaters and sorting out problems early. In many cases making some small adjustments to a cruising pattern is enough to meet our Guidance, while in other cases taking up a home mooring may be more suitable.

It has long been recognised that justice and consistency are, broadly, incompatible. This is why we have judges and not computers for determining cases and outcomes. However, there are many who fail to understand this until caught by the consequences. Up to that point they join the red-top band who enjoy 'post code lottery' reports that are usually most spurious.

[David Schweizer]

1 hour ago, howardang said:

Very much alive and kicking; here is a link to the web site for more info.

 

https://nabo.org.uk/

 

Howard

Hello Howard, I relaise that they are still around, but the problem seems to be that since Stuart Samson moved on, the Wateways Authorities have taken very litle notice of NABO, and I am not aware of any effort on thier part to improve the situation.

 

As you know, I used to be a member, and even got involved by setting up and running the NABO stand at Crick one year, but my enthusiasm waned significantly when they failed to even thank Jan and I for our hard work in apalling weather, but praised the alleged activity of some committee members, who hardly showed on the stand. I allowed my membership to lapse at the end of that year, but no effort was made to try and persuade me to re-join, since then they have done a good impression of fading into oblivion

[ditchcrawler]

On 17/06/2018 at 08:38, alan_fincher said:

 

 

As an aside I note that the only one of the original 4 IWA members who got re-elected on the second round of boater reps, (Vaughan Welch) was the only one absent in the minutes listed above -I've no idea if that's a trend butb it wouldn't surprise me.

 

Vaughan Welch is apparently a member on here, but doesn't declare himself as such, and has in the past had perfetly true observations I have made about him in posts taken down.  I guess it may happen again, but if he is your elected rep, perhaps he should make himself public on here, as others have done?

 

Is Vaughan still a member of IWA

[howardang]

On 17 June 2018 at 16:32, David Schweizer said:

Hello Howard, I relaise that they are still around, but the problem seems to be that since Stuart Samson moved on, the Wateways Authorities have taken very litle notice of NABO, and I am not aware of any effort on thier part to improve the situation.

 

As you know, I used to be a member, and even got involved by setting up and running the NABO stand at Crick one year, but my enthusiasm waned significantly when they failed to even thank Jan and I for our hard work in apalling weather, but praised the alleged activity of some committee members, who hardly showed on the stand. I allowed my membership to lapse at the end of that year, but no effort was made to try and persuade me to re-join, since then they have done a good impression of fading into oblivion

Hello David,

 

There is some truth in the fact that NABO  is not consulted or considered in the same way that it used to be, but In thevdays after Stuart it was deeply involved with many hours spent by Council members involved with the BW and then CRT Management about many subjects. Although I am not as directly involved as I used to be I can assure you that much work and activity is still taking place around the country but By a very small group of volunteers who are very keen to maintain the dialogue with CRT. It has to be said, however, that since the setting up of CRT, in my opinion the opinions and suggestions of boaters have been sidelined by CRT, in favour of the health and well being aspects of the network. I also am of the view that NABO is not very good at letting the wider waterway community lmow what it fete up to, hopefully on their behalf.

 

Like many similar voluntary organisations, NABO needs more active members to increase the pressure on CRT to improve the waterway infrastructure, hopefully to the benefit of all users, boaters and non boaters alike.

 

Howard

[Allan(nb Albert)]

57 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Is Vaughan still a member of IWA

http://narrowboatworld.com/5352-iwa-disowns-welch

However, it was some time before Welch finally quit IWA and the reason was to do with the use of funds ...

 

Edited June 20, 2018 by Allan(nb Albert)