Canal & River Trust (CRT) last week published its London Mooring Strategy with claims it will make it easier to moor in London.

The National Bargee Travellers Association London (NBTA London) which is the London branch of the organisation for boat dwellers without a home mooring, disputes CRT’s claims that it will make it easier to moor in London. The London Mooring Strategy will make it harder to moor in London and Greater London, making many people’s lives impractical or impossible. The CRT blueprint has stretches of no-mooring areas and turns publicly used towpath into business moorings and introduce new watersports zones. The London Mooring Strategy is a strategy to help clear London’s waterways of boat dwellers and turn it into a London waterway leisure and business park.  It is the perfect recipe for gentrification of the waterways.

The London Mooring Strategy includes;

– 22 sites where time limits are further reduced from 14 days to 7 days, 48 hours or 24 hours

– Increased monitoring and enforcement on the sites with reduced time limits

– Two watersports zones next to two rowing clubs. These zones will turn the towpath into ‘no mooring’ areas or ban double mooring

– Four more pre-bookable chargeable visitor mooring sites on the towpath and other publicly used moorings

– More pre-chargeable trade moorings

– 30 more business moorings

– More stretches where no mooring at all is allowed

– Continued no mooring on the Bow Back Rivers. The Bow Back Rivers are the river systems that were closed off to normal navigation for the Olympics and now only open for cruising through however no mooring is allowed anywhere and this is re-stated in the London Mooring Strategy.

NBTA London chairperson, Ian McDowell commented:

‘The London Mooring Strategy demonstrates CRT’s plan to cleanse the waterways of poorer people, in favour of the leisure industry and business.’

The London Mooring Strategy was published not long after CRT adopted a new corporate logo.

Ian McDowell also said: ‘We don’t like the direction that CRT is going. We want the waterways to be for everyone, not for business to make money out of a public asset.

The only positive is the promise of more facilities. NBTA welcomes more facilities but we will not stand for the ever-increasing gentrification of the waterways. We will fight to keep the waterways for everyone.’

NBTA London vows to fight the increasing gentrification of the waterways and is planning further actions to stop CRT in its tracks.