Canal and River Trust (CRT) are planning to change visitor moorings in central London into paid, pre-bookable moorings.
They are proposing ten locations, totalling 1.1 kilometres of towpath between Kensal and Viccy Park, where moorings that are currently free 7 or 14 day moorings will become 7 day moorings costing £10 to £12 per night. The fees that are being asked for would equal between £70 and £84 per week with no mention of how CRT will manage late arrivals, cancelled bookings, or over-stayers.
The proposals would mean for many boaters who cannot afford these significant fees a very long run from Kings Cross to Willesden that may well cause a lot of stress. It is another attempt by CRT to push out poorer boaters from central London. This is nothing less than social cleansing of the waterways.
CRT are also planning to make it an ‘improper mooring’ offence to moor a widebeam and a narrowbeam next to each other, no matter how wide the river or canal is. While we understand that this may be sensible where the waterway is narrow, such a blanket rule is unnecessary and unfair, especially given their plans to further reduce free mooring spaces in London.
[September 2023]Risk Assessment Confirms River Lee ‘No Mooring’ Zones are ‘Not Necessary’
The National Bargee Travellers Association (NBTA) commissioned an independent risk assessment across CRT-proposed “No Mooring” Zones within the WSZ in December 2022. This assessment, carried out by a qualified and experienced IOSH and IIRSM Risk Assessment professional at three of the ‘No Mooring’ Zones, concluded the following:
‘Boats moored in this area cannot be considered an additional risk as they comply with national standard practice(…) Mooring restrictions at these sites are not necessary’.
The resulting verdict goes on to suggest that it is more important for craft – including row boats – to manage their speed effectively to avoid any potential incidents. Read more here
The Safety Zones continued…
When the CRT first proposed the full details of the Water “Safety” Zones in 2020, NBTA calculated that 550 mooring spaces would be lost in Broxbourne and Tottenham/Hackney. In some places the CRT also proposed introducing a ban on double mooring and wider boats. Following the magnificent efforts of the boating community to push back against these “Safety” Zones, CRT initially appeared to desist from their implementation, in favour of a navigation forum of stakeholders.
Unfortunately, the CRT continue their attempt to impose, potentially the most draconian part of the original “Safety” Zones outline, their new no mooring sections. We now estimate that 295 casual mooring opportunities are at risk.
Snapshot history of the Water Safety Zones
(click on the arrows to reveal key moments of the campaign each year)
2023
CRT stated that enforcement of their no mooring zones would begin on 10 January 2023. Hundreds of boaters remained defiant, with many staying in these zones up to 14 days before being replaced by another resistant boater. The CRT notices left by District Enforcement stated that a boater was moored contrary to British Waterways Acts, Bye-laws, Conditions, Guidance etc. To investigate what kind of legal standing CRT believed they had, NBTA solicitors asked them to qualify which specific Acts and Bye-laws relate to the no mooring sites. CRT subsequently failed to provide any Acts or Bye-laws to support their stance.
NBTA caseworkers continued to provide boaters with replies to CRT enforcement letters around the clock. In response, CRT responses were weak and deflective. After one particular email exchange where we sought to clarify the CRT’s stance in relation to the law, the officer ended one of their emails with:
“Anyway, I’ll leave it there for now. Feel free to get back to me if you have any other questions I won’t be able to give a straight answer to.”
This elusiveness hasn’t been exclusive to the legal side of the campaign either, with CRT’s public relations efforts regarding the matter continuing to deny their unfair treatment of itinerant boaters.
As of 31 May 2023, a Freedom of Information Request detailed that the Trust had spent £250k (rounded to nearest 10k) on trying to stop boaters from mooring in the ‘Water Safety Zones’ on the River Lea (across Lower Lee at Hackney/Tottenham and Broxbourne). All the while, CRT continued to increase license fees and divide the boating community.
The CRT lied to us by stating that they were putting the safety zones on hold, pending a discussion within the Lea Navigation Forum meeting. However, before the first Forum meeting had taken place, the CRT had already installed no mooring signs on most of the ‘no mooring’ sites on their Water Safety Zone map. We (NBTA London) brought this dishonest behaviour to the attention of the Lee Navigation Forum. CRT’s response was to disregard the dishonesty of their own actions which undermined the whole Lee Navigation Consultation. We asked for reasoning from CRT to why each of the no mooring spaces were made as such. CRT didn’t provide this. We then provided a document stating our opinion of each no mooring site at the very next meeting. More than half a year later CRT were yet to give a proper response.
During that half year, boaters moored in places that are perfectly reasonable and safe have continued to receive unjustified threats from CRT. Thankfully people continue to moor in these places in large numbers.
2018-2020: FROM ‘WATER SPORTS…’ TO ‘WATER SAFETY…’
“Water Sport Zones” had been part of CRT’s 2018 London Mooring Strategy, much of which wasn’t realised for funding reasons. After fading away for 2 years, CRT reintroduced them in 2020, cynically rechristening them as “Safety Zones”.
Predicated on the deeply flawed notion that stationary, moored boats pose a collision risk to rowers, the Safety Zones had not undergone stakeholder consultation (except for two rowing clubs) and caused a backlash from boaters.
On Saturday 26 March 2022, hundreds of boaters marched on Canal & River Trust’s (CRT) main London office to protest the Trust’s continued attack on the capital’s liveaboard boating community.
Starting in Regents Park, the protest marched to CRT’s offices in Little Venice where they were addressed by speakers from the boating community and land based supporters and engaged with the public to explain how these discriminatory policy changes are threatening people’s livelihoods.
The protest was hailed as a great success by Ian McDowell, Chair of the London branch of the National Bargee Travellers Association, which has helped organize boaters’ opposition to CRT’s attacks.
Since London’s boaters forced CRT into a consultation on their plan to remove up to 550 mooring places on the River Lea in 2021, the Trust has doubled down on their plans to cull boats from London’s waterways including:
• Bringing in more reduced mooring times on the Grand Union; • Implementing banning boats from 295 ‘no mooring’ spaces in ‘safety zones’ despite indicating they wouldn’t; • Turning a blind eye to criminal damage of safety features of the River Lea inside a so-called ‘safety zone’; • Proposing 1.1km of new chargeable moorings and further mooring restrictions in Central London; • Revealing that the Trust no longer takes complaints about their policies.
The National Bargee Travellers Association (NBTA) believe this is further evidence of CRT’s plans to prioritise leisure over living on Britain’s waterways. Early in 2021, CRT announced that they would be restricting moorings along 10km of the river Lea, claiming that mooring in these ‘Water Safety Zones’ was unsafe. The NBTA, together with the London boating community, fought back by organising two flotillas involving over 70 boats and 1000+ people. CRT was forced to engage boaters in consultation, the result of which showed boaters are concerned about safety, but the ‘Water Safety Zones’ would not make the river safer. The ‘River Lea Forum’ was established with representatives from all interested user groups to discuss what would make the waterways safer. However, CRT ignored boaters’ voices by imposing many of the ‘Safety Zones’ before the first Forum even took place.
In October 2021, ‘no mooring’ signs started appearing on the River Lea and boaters moored in these areas were told they would have enforcement action taken against them under the new ‘Improper Mooring Process’. CRT claims that these sites come under its existing rules on where boats are permitted to moor, but these are the exact same stretches that they’d planned to designate as no mooring as part of their ‘Water Safety Zones’, making these new rules for areas where boaters have lawfully moored without any penalty for many years.
On 10 January 2022, enforcement started on the ‘no mooring’ sites and since then, CRT has continued to try and intimidate boaters by giving notices threatening to terminate licences and thereby forcing boaters out of their homes. CRT has also employed a third party car parking ‘enforcement’ agency at huge cost to hand out these notices.
Tyrone Halligan, Amelia Friend and their two year old son Isaac.
London houseboat dwellers stage a protest against what they believe is a drive by the Canal & River Trust to force them out, as part of a gentrification process of the UK (particularly London’s) waterways.
Amelia and Tyrone have lived on a boat travelling the London waterways for seven years. Together with their two-year-old son, they spend up to 6 months a year staying in one place to the next along the stretch of the River Lea from Tottenham to Stratford where the ‘no mooring’ signs have gone up. They are currently expecting their second child and worry that they may have to leave the water, and perhaps London, altogether. “This area is our home. My son attends a nursery here and we’re registered with doctors, dentists, and my midwife appointments are in Homerton Hospital. We have built a life within this area and not being able to moor here truly feels as if we are being forced out,” Amelia says. “The stress of receiving abrupt emails, notices and knocks at the door, about where we are moored, in areas we have allowed to be for years previous, is causing us a great deal of stress at a time when, as a young and growing family, we already have a lot going on. No consideration is being given for people who have set up their lives, careers and families in these areas.”
Days before Christmas 2021, CRT made a fresh attempt at trying to take away mooring spaces in the capital by sneaking out another consultation with proposals for paid-for bookable short term moorings of less than 14 days. This, despite their own figures showing that the two ‘test sites’ for these new chargeable moorings have had less than 25% occupancy – most of the year they were wasted moorings. They’re also proposing further areas of restrictions on triple mooring and narrowboat to widebeam mooring – regardless of how wide the navigation is. “This continued disregard for the people who live and work in these new ‘no mooring’ and proposed paid-for mooring areas drives boaters away from their livelihoods, and out of their homes,” argues Ian McDowell, chair of the London branch of NBTA. “By ignoring its responsibility to preserve the waterways for all communities, CRT is crossing a dangerous line that could see London Waterways and other waterways become usable only by those who can afford any extra costs CRT chooses to introduce in addition to the licence fee. Their actions only serve to show that while CRT markets themselves as a charity that promotes wellbeing, they repeatedly try to introduce policies which attack boaters’ wellbeing and way of life.”
NBTA London demands that CRT concentrates on its mandate to maintain the navigation with things like dredging, rather than persecuting boaters who moor on some of the widest waterways in the country. The Trust must stop destroying boating communities by favouring one kind of boater over another.
NBTA and London Boaters have fought and prevented unfair and destructive attempts like these before, and we will do so again. National Bargee Travellers Association London branch (NBTAL) is supporting boaters in their direct action to disobey the ‘no mooring’ signs through providing a template complaint letter if they do receive a notice and posters to display in windows declaring the boat is moored in protest. Hundreds of boaters have defied CRT’s unfair and unjustified restrictions so far and since we are unable to complain online, now we are marching on CRT’s offices to resist the displacement of boaters and to protect our homes.
Come to discuss what is next for the campaign against the ‘safety’ zones and chargeable mooring. Help us make a plan for what we as a campaign should do next.
10th April 2022 at 5pm The meeting can be accessed online via:
National Bargee Travellers Association - London Branch 