On a crisp winter’s day in November, over one hundred boaters from across UK waterways descended on the Canal and River Trust’s Birmingham office. Boaters from all over, from Macclesfield canal, Birmingham canals, to Kennet and Avon canal, Monmouth and Brecon canal to River Lea and many more waterways unified to protest against CRT’s discriminatory licence fee surcharge. A few boats with banners joined us outside the office, which was really fantastic to see, and we were able to get the story into several press outlets too.
The demo was a great success and showed CRT that we will not stand by and allow them to threaten our way of life. Thank you to everyone who came or supported from afar!
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
The process of privatisation can be witnessed in various stages on London’s canal network. As visitor moorings become pre-bookable and chargeable moorings become private, the absence of boats on significant lengths of towpath in Central London is testament to the financial exclusion of boaters from these areas.
In 2016 NBTA made it explicitly clear in talks with CRT that public moorings should not be converted to private use. In August 2023, chargeable moorings at Rembrandt Gardens and Paddington Basin doubled in price overnight from £12 to £25. 80m of previous visitor moorings in Paddington Basin and 160m in Little Venice were converted to chargeable also at £25 a night, effectively £50 for two nights with a midday turnaround. Beyond the financial means of most boaters.
Paddington Basin
A Freedom of Information Request reveals pontoons in Paddington are used at half-capacity 49% of the time, bookings made across 1,200 days generated £16,000 in income. At Rembrandt Gardens 584 days generated £6,350. While there has been high uptake of free pre-bookable mooring in Kings Cross and Angel; new chargeable moorings in Little Venice and Paddington are running at 24% capacity and have since August been underused with a total of only 218 bookings and £5,425 in revenue. These moorings are sighted by three rangers (among other duties) at a cost of £100,000.
CRT claim financial exclusion makes the system ‘fair’ for all boaters, giving everyone an equal opportunity. Significant lengths of pre-bookable space; 200m at Colebrook Row in Angel and 220m at Treaty St in Kings Cross may well be more democratic for the time being, but how long will they remain free? As mooring opportunities are reduced to make chargeable space, overcrowding is experienced on other parts of the network. Travelling boaters, already threatened with surcharges for lack of ownership and place are being further marginalised by the introduction of these zones.
CRT’s vision for London seems to be canals without boats.
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
Boaters are holding the Easter Regatta against the surcharge in Paddington, one of the most corporatised parts of the network. The main event will be on Saturday 30 March 2024.
Have you ever had to pay extra for not having something?
Well if you are a boater without a home mooring that is what the Canal and River Trust (CRT) has in store for you from April 1st (yes really) 2024.CRT say they are in financial dire straits. They blame a number of factors for this: the reduction of the Government grant (which they were told from day one of their formation in 2012 would be cut completely), recent inflation, and climate change all get a mention. And now they are trying to blame boaters without a home mooring. The only place they refuse to lay the blame is at their own feet. But this is where the blame truly belongs.
The short history of CRT is littered with financial negligence, poor decision making, spending on vanity projects and hairbrained waterways management schemes; whether it is the millions of pounds wasted on attempting to raise income through the Friends scheme or the £250 000+ spent on their failed “safety zones” in London to name but two, CRT is an exercise in financial mismanagement and failure. From April 1st (yes, really) 2024, boaters will have to pay a surcharge on top of their licence if they do not have a home mooring. This will start at 5% rising in 5% increments over 5 years to 25%.
CRT say that this is only fair because we get more “utility” from our licences, a claim that they are unable to support with any data. Anyone with a knowledge of how CRT tries to spin their management of the waterways knows that when they speak about fairness it is a dog whistle to justify, and gain support for, the further marginalisation of itinerant boaters. It is a wedge they continually try to use to split the wider boating community.
The surcharge is not about raising money – the income generated even at the 25% rate wouldn’t cover the salaries of the organisation’s top 15 earners. Instead it is another attempt to blame our community for the parlous state of the waterways resulting from CRT’s mismanagement and to marginalise us out of existence.
We cannot allow this attempt by CRT target our community to stand. Their wide beam surcharge, which was left unchallenged and will now rise to as much as 75% for itinerant widebeamers, shows that once they are allowed to get away with an attack they will just keep turning the screw.
Join boaters and supporters from all over the country at 12pm on Saturday, 30th March for the Boaters’ Easter Regatta in Paddington and show your opposition to CRT’s attempts to blame us for their incompetence. There will be stalls, entertainment, and a protest.
Attend by boat or however you can – the more people who show contempt for CRT’s plans, the more likely we can continue to fight and defeat them. Together we are strong.
Start at 12 noon outside Paddington Station on the canal.
Meet at the canalside entrance to Paddington Underground Station near to the Hammersmith and City line, Paddington, London, W2 1HB at 12 noon.Start here:https://maps.app.goo.gl/yjbDGboVM8MtFFy26‘what 3 words’ is ‘curve.played.dream’
Huge thank you to everyone who came to the National Demo in Birmingham on Saturday! We had an amazing day and a fantastic turnout – over one hundred boaters joined us to march on CRT’s offices against the licence fee surcharge. There was a great contingent of boats with banners. Brilliant pictures below!
Big thanks to all of those who organised it and helped out on the day too! We can’t do these events without you!
We were able to get the issue in a range of press including ITV, BBC and local press.
Pamela Smith, Chair of the NBTA, said: “CRT’s latest attack on the travelling boater community is discriminatory, unpopular, financially illiterate and quite possibly unlawful – none of which comes as a surprise given the Trust’s increasingly chaotic mismanagement, and desperate attempts to distract from it in any way they can. This time, however, they’ve only strengthened the resolve of many in the boater community -both with and without home moorings – to resist their attempts to eradicate our whole way of life and demand one licence for all. Hundreds have actively joined the campaign of resistance so far, and anger with the Trust is at a fever pitch. The NBTA are helping to channel this energy, and to ensure that – just like every other time CRT or British Waterways before them have tried to get rid of our community – we stand united, strong and victorious in our opposition.”
In 2016, prior to launching the London Mooring Strategy, which was published in 2018, CRT and NBTA-London had round-the-table discussions about CRT’s thoughts on “pre-bookable” moorings. NBTA made it explicitly clear that if there were any “pre-bookable” moorings to be created, then they should be on the offside, and that tow-path moorings should never be chargeable.
Instead, CRT proceeded to make use of any vacant offside space not yet used for mooring for “long term”, or “residential” moorings, rather than increasing mooring space for visitors who were willing to book ahead, often making deals with third parties who owned the offside land. Two such set of moorings is at Broadway Market on the Regent, which in particular impedes navigation in what was already a very busy part of the London network, whilst overlooking the opportunity to create “pre-bookable” moorings; the other being Matchmakers on the River Lea, where the installation of those moorings meant CRT with their ‘safety’ zones are trying to enforce a ‘no mooring’ site on the towpath.
Yet, this is taken from CRT’s website:
“It’s really important that navigation is maintained and that it’s not impeded by moored boats. The inner London waterways are very busy with many different types of boater: liveaboard, leisure, freight, and business craft as well as increasing numbers of unpowered craft. This measure is intended to ensure that there is clear navigation for everyone in these busy areas.”
Their policy for safe navigation goes into the ether, however when it comes to the possibility of monetising new moorings, such as those on the offside at Broadway Market on the Regent.
Broadway Market, Regents Canal. Pic by Flickr/@scratch_n_sniff
Seven years following CRT’s first discussions with NBTA, CRT have now taken away several “casual”, “visitor” or towpath moorings, making them “pre-bookable”, and furthermore, have started charging extra. Usually, a CRT licence includes the right to moor on any towpath without extra charge, but CRT are turning 1.1km of London’s regular towpath into new ‘Chargeable’ Moorings that would cost an additional £25 extra a day. CRT’s argument for doing so is to make it ‘fairer’ for past-time and full-time liveaboard boaters alike to have a chance of mooring up in popular parts of the canal network. When we checked the facts behind the manipulated CRT survey on how successful the Paddington Basin chargeable moorings are, a Freedom Of Information Request reveals that these moorings have only been used 25% of the time – the rest of the time they remained empty and unused.
The latest moorings to be eradicated from public, free-for-all use are in Little Venice and Paddington Basin, but this is just the beginning .
On reading the T&Cs for what CRT call “pre-bookable”, but are actually chargeable moorings, included in these T&Cs are “planned” eco moorings on the Regent at Kings Cross and on Sweetwater in the Olympic Park on the Lee Navigation, strongly implying that these eco moorings may also become chargeable. NBTA also infer from this that the existing eco moorings on the Regent at Angel may become chargeable too, not just “pre-bookable”.
Aside from being financially exclusive and therefore fundamentally unfair in the first place, the quantity of chargeable moorings is not proportionate to the needs of boat owners. Lots of these bookable, chargeable mooring spaces will either be paid for by boaters who can’t find public towpath mooring since CRT have reduced those spaces, or they will remain empty because people a) can’t afford them, and b) don’t want them. If they remain largely empty, this may then be a great excuse for CRT to turn them into private moorings – as was the case at Here East moorings on the River Lee.
CRT announce itinerant boat dwellers will pay higher licence fees than others
Just before this newsletter went to press, the Canal and River Trust (CRT) announced that it plans to charge boats without home moorings more than boats with home moorings.
The implications of this are devastating. CRT will now be able to use boat licence fees as a way of removing the travelling boat dweller community from the waterways. It is more important than ever that we join together as a united community to stop CRT in their tracks. We will be sending round a ballot to all members of the NBTA to ask for your input on what action we take next. If you are not already a member, please sign up now to contribute to this vital decision. We have also organised an online meeting to coordinate our fight back. Please join us on Monday 9th October at 7pm. The access details for the meeting can be found on page 3. We hope to see you all there.
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
CRT admits to spending up to £250k on trying to stop boaters from mooring in the ‘Water Safety Zones’ on the River Lea. A Freedom of Information request shows that as of 31 May 2023, the Trust has spent anything up to £249,680.09 in the two WSZs on the Lower Lea at Hackney/Tottenham and at Broxbourne. All the while, trying to up licence fees and divide the boating community. CRT should stop wasting money on preventing people mooring in these so-called ‘Safety Zones’.
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
After CRT ignored repeated requests to provide evidence that boats moored in the ’Safety Zones’ were a danger to navigation, NBTA-L commissioned its own independent assessment. The report, carried out by a qualified and experienced Risk Assessment professional, concluded: ‘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’.
It goes on to suggest that it’s more important for craft – including row boats – to manage their speed effectively to avoid any potential incidents. This upholds NBTA’s long held view that CRT’s ’Safety Zone’ policy has never been about safety, but aims instead to make life difficult for boaters, which could ultimately drive many off the water and out of their homes.
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
Elmbridge council on Environmental Agency waterways is re-opening their consultation about imposing a public space protection order on ‘unauthorised’ moorings after NBTA encouraged people to challenge their plans. The PSPO would have allowed the council to issue fines of up to £400 for mooring on the Thames within Elmbridge for longer than 24 hours at a time.
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
After great effort by the NBTA and others, boaters without home moorings on Canal & River Trust waters will now finally receive the £600 winter energy grant. Together, boaters have fought hard for our community and won a victory. However, many people – including itinerant boaters on non Canal & River Trust waters, many live-aboards with a leisure moorings, and those living itinerantly on land – remain excluded, despite the grant being promised to every household in the UK.
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
Canal and River Trust (CRT) which manages most of inland waterways in England and Wales are marginalising travelling boat dwellers by planning to levy a ‘surcharge’ to boaters for not having a home mooring. CRT are trying to destroy our nomadic way of life. Let’s come together to oppose the surcharge on our community.
National protest to march on CRT’s boss Richard Parry’s offices in Central Birmingham on Saturday 25 November at 12 noon! Fight CRT’s divisive licence fee hikes!
Get ready to march in protest!
Join us on the march, meet at City Centre Gardens in Birmingham
If you can, bring boats and moor them outside their offices. Let us know if you want to be involved:
If you want be added the licencecampaign@lists.riseup.net campaign email list or be added to the campaign WhatsApp groups, ask us to add you by emailing: stopboatlicencediscrimination@gmail.com
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
A volunteer organisation formed in 2009 campaigning and providing advice for itinerant boat dwellers on Britain’s inland and coastal waterways
National Bargee Travellers Association - London Branch 