As many of you know, the main reason CRT has given for charging more for boaters that don’t have a home mooring is that they need more money. CRT says this is due to two things; 1) inflation, and 2) cuts to the funding they get from the government. 

However, inflation increases are accounted for with an increase in the standard boat licence. In 2022, a CRT standard boat licence was increased by 8%, while inflation that year was 9%. Then CRT increased the standard boat licence once again in 2023 by 9%, while the inflation the same year was just 7%. In 2024, they continued to increase the standard boat licence by another 6% at a time that inflation has decreased to 2%. So as you can see, with boat licences CRT more than compensated for inflation. Therefore, CRT can’t seriously argue that they need to increase licences on boats without home moorings due to inflation.

Now onto the cuts to funding from the government that CRT receives. It is possible to counter this argument with the following argument:

When CRT was set up in 2012 the plan set out by the government was always to cut CRT funding over time until CRT no longer received government funding, and CRT’s job was to find other ways to fund the waterways they managed. For some years, CRT got more funding from the government than British Waterways before them. However, instead of succeeding in the plan to fund the waterways without the government, CRT spent the time wasting money on things like new logos and the ‘safety zones’, plus selling off assets such as most of the marinas, dredging equipment and most other things necessary for managing the waterways; it subsequently costs them much more to hire the equipment back. So either CRT leadership is to blame for mismanagement, or the CRT project was set to fail from the beginning. Or a bit of both. Therefore, it can easily be argued that we as boaters shouldn’t foot the bill for the failure of CRT.

However, the real question should be – can the extra money raised by the surcharge on boats without home moorings cover the decreases in funding from the government?

We worked out that CRT would raise roughly an extra £4.27 million with the surcharge on boats without home moorings over the next 5 years. Which is a drop in the ocean compared to more £320m CRT claims will be cut from its government funding. Also CRT hasn’t put forward any serious plans to raise the hundreds of millions needed to cover the loss of government grants, and charging boaters more will never fill that gap. Therefore, we maintain that CRT isn’t charging a surcharge because they need the money, it is simply a way to make our way of life harder, in an effort to rid the waterways of our community.