August | 2023 | National Bargee Travellers Association

In February earlier this year, the Canal and River Trust (CRT) sent out an email announcing their upcoming “Consultation on future boat licence pricing”. The preliminary email stated that the purpose of the consultation was “to gather feedback on boat licence pricing over the next ten years to help support the long-term future of the 2,000 miles of waterways”. Three weeks later, boaters started to receive the invitation to the consultation from a company called DJS Research, who CRT had employed to undertake the process. In our invitation, we were told in no uncertain terms that CRT will be raising the boat licence fee “by more than the rate of inflation for the foreseeable future” and what CRT supposedly wanted from us was to help them find the “fairest way to apply these increases”.

Reeling from the shock of being told our licence fees will increase yet again, we cautiously opened the survey only to discover an extremely leading, divisive and biased set of questions, heavily aimed at raising the licence fee for boats without a home mooring specifically. Knowing that this consultation went out to all boaters, those with and without home moorings, the consultation felt very much like it was pitting boater against boater.

In two out the first three questions, it was suggested that the licence fee for boats without home moorings should rise. A third question focused specifically on whether it is more or less reasonable to charge higher fees for “continuous cruisers”, with no option of saying “not reasonable in the slightest”. The questions in this survey were clearly implying that boats without home moorings should be priced differently to boats with home moorings. CRT may as well have asked: “Should we raise the licence fee for: a) continuous cruisers; b) boats without home moorings; or; c) itinerant boat dwellers?”.

As such, the NBTA saw the potential results of this consultation as a direct threat to our community, so we produced a set of suggested answers to all the questions. Our suggestions aimed to provide answers that would not divide boaters and instead encourage every boater to stand together in the face of rising fees, the opposite to what CRT seemed to be driving at with their questions. Our campaign was nationwide; information leaflets detailing the threat of the consultation were distributed across the CRT network, and we had a huge social media outreach drive. We hope that we managed to reach boaters everywhere, and thwart the very biased views CRT were pushing.

This consultation seemed to be yet another part of CRT’s continued assault on the itinerant boat dweller community and their bid to force us off the waterways. and of course there is their history of attempting to raise licence fees for itinerant boaters specifically (you can read about these in detail here). When the numerous aspects of this sustained effort are considered, it is not hard to see a pattern emerge. CRT have taken away facilities, mooring rings and bollards, and mooring spaces (only to replace them with bookable moorings in some cases), and of course there is their history of attempting to raise licence fees for itinerant boaters specifically (see the history article in this newsletter for more details). Itinerant boat dwellers have been targeted by CRT for decades, and if they get away with pricing boats without home moorings differently to those with home moorings, they will be able to price itinerant boaters out of existence.

The results of the consultation are now due to be published in October 2023. If CRT decide to use their survey to justify a decision that has harmful consequences for our community, we will show them that that would be more trouble than it’s worth.

The NBTA would like to thank everyone who filled in CRT’s leading and divisive survey. Thank you to everyone who helped encourage others to fill it in, to the people who put it on social media, to those who chatted to people, and especially to the people who handed out the ‘Don’t let CRT price us off the water’ leaflet across the CRT network. Together, we are a strong community who will not be bullied off the waterways.

NBTA London needs your support to carry on our work. Please get in touch here if you would like to volunteer with us. Alternatively your donations are vital to us supporting boaters with their legal case work, campaign banners and other printed material as well as events. You can help us with your donations online here

Along the waterways, there are signs claiming the Canal & River Trust relies on donations to do its work. A quick look at their annual report shows donations account for a relatively small amount of the Trust’s income, at 3% for 2021/22. Boat licences and moorings, however, make up a fifth of the Trust’s annual income, at £44.5m for the last financial year.

Income and expenditure are recorded in millions (not thousands or pounds), projects are listed in the abstract without breakdown of costs, charts show vague approximations without quantifying true percentage. In the 176 page report; the word “boater” is mentioned only 8 times, “licence” 6, “mooring” 10.

The Canal & River Trust (CRT) is known to most if not all boaters who live on or use the waterways through London and beyond. The Trust operates as a charity and as such has charitable objectives, including to “preserve, protect, operate and manage inland waterways for public benefit… [and] improve the conditions of life for socially and economically disadvantaged communities who live nearby”.

The Trust may be best known among boaters for introducing more chargeable moorings, forcing through so-called “Water Safety Zones” that reduce available mooring spaces to boaters without a home mooring, and attempting to hike licence fees for boats without home moorings (again). It comes as no surprise, then, that the “financial strategy of the Trust is to maximise net income from all sources.”

So where exactly does CRT get its funds, and how does it spend the money?

Despite being a charity, and claiming to rely on donations, charitable giving from the public accounts for only £6.5m (3 percent) of CRT’s income. They spend £41.6m on fundraising.

£38.8 million came from charities in the form of grants from Historic England, the Active Travel fund, National Lottery, Green Recovery Challenge Fund and local Levelling up funds among others, often directed towards specific projects.

£300,000 was left to them in peoples’ wills.

Tax exempt on income and profits from investments, a large portion of the Trust’s annual earnings comes from return on its investment portfolio. Value has increased 26% over the past five years, from £800m to over £1.1bn (yes, billion). With “ground rents [being] very resilient holdings over the long term”, last year, returns contributed to a third of CRT’s income. In fact, the submission to the Charity Commission shows an additional £76.7m of investment gains were retained for future use. While the Trust looks around for places to squeeze out a penny, they might also consider digging a little deeper into their own pockets.

While external contractors are listed for reservoir inspection and property surveys, the cost of outsourced contracts is not. CRT has around 1,700 employees on the payroll and 3,700 volunteers, with 83 of its staff earning over £60k. Of those top earners, 10 earn more than £100k and 2 earn up to £250k… with community, volunteer and corporate groups removing “hundreds of tonnes of environmentally damaging litter and fly-tipping”, perhaps money might be better spent on bins.

A break-down of expenditure by region would be illuminating, as would some acknowledgement in the annual reporting of the fact that the CRT is the de facto local authority for several tens of thousands of people who live on boats as their primary residence. As they make improvement to reservoirs, water pumps, towpaths, tree clearing, dealing with contamination and pollution, bridges, slipways and aqueducts and are concerned with the upkeep of towpaths for the 9 million reported fortnightly visitors, bins and taps have no mention at all.

Additionally, NBTA London has recently submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to CRT for the disclosure of spending on “Water Safety Zone” enforcement. With no apparent risk assessment or basis in evidence, could resources and effort be better spent elsewhere?

Boaters will be most familiar with the Trust’s licencing income stream, which made up £44.5m in the financial year ending 2022. Of this, around half comes from licences, rather than mooring permits and trade. You would expect the Trust to take more of an interest in the wellbeing of liveaboard boaters, given they contribute a fair sum to the Trust’s balance sheet. While an aim of the Trust is the improvement of conditions of life for those in the vicinity of its waterways, its proposed increase in licence fees appears to care less for those who live on them.

Trawling their high-level corporate finance and accounting jargon, boaters do not seem to figure in their calculations much at all. As their strategy is to “maximise net income” with the promise of being “unrelenting in their efforts to generate funds” it is likely the Trust will find other ways to pass on rising costs to boaters. The Chief Executive reported to the Board earlier this year that boater satisfaction remained on a downward trend. Making life better by water, perhaps, but harder if you live on it.

National Bargee Travellers Association – London Branch

Monthly Archives: August 2023

A volunteer organisation formed in 2009 campaigning and providing advice for itinerant boat dwellers on Britain’s inland and coastal waterways