CRT and British Waterways before them have been trying to get rid of boats without home moorings for decades.

In early 2002, BW stated that they believed the licensing system was “felt by many to be unduly complicated”, in a document entitled ‘A fresh look at BWs craft licensing structure: Consultation Paper for Boaters May 2002′. They proposed a more complicated tiered licensing system where they would increase the licence fee for a boat without a home mooring to 2.5 times that of the normal licence fee. In their document they even argued, “there is a compelling argument for a ‘pay as you go’ system”.

Later that year, they published ‘A fresh look at BW’s craft licensing structure: Consultation update’. Here, BW put boats without home moorings into four categories: ‘genuine continuous cruisers’, ‘bridge-hoppers’ or ‘short range cruisers’, static ‘live aboard’ boats and boats awaiting a mooring. BW considered ‘bridge-hoppers’ or ‘short range cruisers’ were people who “moved less than 50 km in any three month period”. They were concerned that if they charged boats without home moorings more then they would harm the ‘genuine continuous cruisers’. They consequently proposed that boats without home moorings who moved within a 50km range in one region pay a fee equivalent to the lowest price permanent mooring in the same area. Many felt this to be arbitrary and deeply unfair and, under pressure, this idea was also discarded.

In 2003, British Waterways (BW) introduced a Trial Mooring Code requiring Constant Cruisers to travel a staggering 120 consecutive lock miles every 3 months, and log their cruising in a book available to patrol officers on demand. This was to be followed by boaters without a home mooring as well as by leisure boaters who spent more than 42 days away from their mooring. BW claimed this was necessary due to overcrowding and overstaying. They also claimed that their staff would ‘demonstrate flexibility and empathy’ when applying the code, values that they themselves were entirely lacking in the creation of such an extreme set of rules.

The Trial Mooring Code was sent via post to boat owners and put on BW’s website. BW invited boaters to respond to the code over the following seven months – an impossible task for those itinerant boaters who didn’t have a reliable postal address or internet access (this was 2003!) As one boater observed at the time, it was particularly unfair to circulate the questionnaire about the changes by post as it excluded the population of boaters who would be most disadvantaged by the Trial Mooring Code.

Resistance to the code was strong and an independent consultation was conducted which approached boaters through IWA, NABO and by distributing questionnaires on the towpath. The independent consultation examined opinions and impacts on the entire boater community. It found that the vast majority of boaters, those with permanent moorings and those who were itinerant, rejected the code. It would have made attending work, school and healthcare appointments almost impossible and would have made it very difficult to access benefit payments. The responses from the independent consultation questioned BW’s assumption that overcrowding and overstaying were problems that needed to be addressed with any new legislation. NABO then threatened judicial review, arguing that the mooring code exceeded BW’s powers as determined in the 1995 waterways act.

As a result of this co-ordinated effort from the boating community and interest groups, BW discontinued the Trial Moorings Code and instead published ‘Mooring Guidance for Continuous Cruisers’ which impressed on boaters their requirement that they make a ‘genuine progressive journey… around the network or a specific part of it’. The wildly unfair 120-lock-miles-in-three-months was gone.

The 2002 and 2003 campaigns showed that we can win, which is why now, as we face a similar threat for the fourth time, it is important to reflect and learn from previous successes.