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NBTA FIGHT BACK AGAINST LICENCE FEE CONSULTATION

August 2, 2023 stopboatlicencediscrimination Leave a comment

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

Article, nbta london, News, Newsletter

CRT ACCOUNTABLE TO WHOM?

August 2, 2023 stopboatlicencediscrimination 1 Comment

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.

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CRT UP TO THEIR OLD TRICKS AGAIN

July 4, 2023 stopboatlicencediscrimination 2 Comments

So this year CRT pulled out of their bag of tricks, one of the favourite waterways authorities questions: ‘Should people without a home mooring pay more than those with?’ And without much warning they actioned this into their new surprise survey. It’s not the first time CRT or their predecessor British Waterways (BW) brought this question out. Within the last 21 years they have bought it out four times.

In the Bill that became the British Waterways Act 1995, BW wanted it to be a criminal offence to keep a boat on BW waterways without a home mooring. However, with an almighty pushback we instead got an Act which gave us the legal right to exist on BW waterways. This was quite a setback for BW, it had for the 20-30 previous years been making life on the water harder. Now it was law that they had to licence our boats as long as we followed three basic criteria. Therefore, BW and following them CRT had to come up with some inventive ideas to deal with their persistent pest – the travelling boater.

They tried a few different tactics in their attempts to eliminate our community from the waterways, from reducing mooring stay times to taking away moorable banks to outlandish enforcement strategies such as 2003’s plan to make our travelling boaters travel 120 different lock-miles every 3 months without turning back. Some plans were beaten back, others weren’t. So far each time BW and CRT have proposed that boats without home moorings should pay more; it has been successfully resisted.

In early 2002, BW stated that they believed the licensing system was “felt by many to be unduly complicated”, in a document entitled ‘A fresh look at BWs craft licensing structure:

Consultation Paper for Boaters May 2002′. They proposed a more complicated tiered licensing system where they would increase the licence fee for a boat without a home mooring to 2.5 times that of the normal licence fee. In their document they even argued, ‘there is a compelling argument for a ‘pay as you go’ system’.

Later that year, after doing a bit a consultation they published ‘A fresh look at BW’s craft licensing structure: Consultation update’. Here BW put boats without home moorings into four categories: genuine continuous cruisers, bridge-hoppers or short range cruisers, static “live aboard” boats and boats awaiting a mooring. Just for clarification, BW considered bridge-hoppers or short range cruisers were people who “moved less than 50 km in any three month period”. They were concerned that if they charged boats without home moorings more then they would harm the “genuine continuous cruisers” as well as the other types of categories they’d coined without home moorings. Therefore, they proposed that boats without home moorings who moved within a range in one region “pay a district mooring fee equivalent to the lowest priced BW permanent mooring in the area where your craft is normally kept or used”. Under pressure, this idea was also discarded.

In a 2005 document entitled ‘Licence Fee Consultation June 2005’ BW proposed to increase the licence fee for boats without a home mooring by 147%. It was identified in a report by BW entitled ‘Fee Structures for Boat Licences in England and Wales White Paper’ in the same year, that if implemented it would have raised £1million from only 1,360 boat licence holders.

A group called the Continuous Cruiser Action Group was set up to coordinate boaters responses to the consultation.

A section of boaters organised themselves against it and set up a campaign mobile phone group. Some of the organised boaters travelled across the nation and painted the phone number on locks asking people to get involved. The phoneline became inundated with texts of people wanting to do something. If BW didn’t back down the plan was to send text messages for people to meet at a list of different lock pinch points and do a go slow flotilla to cause disruption. BW backed down so the resistance plan didn’t need to implemented. At the time in 2006, the Continuous Cruiser Action Group made a statement saying, “just because all has gone quiet, it isn’t over”. They weren’t wrong.

In early 2008, hire boat company Wyvern Shipping circulated a petition calling on BW to make continuous cruisers pay a higher licence fee. In January 2008, Sally Ash BW’s then Head of Boating had received a letter from the Association of Pleasure Craft Operators (APCO), the hire boat companies’ trade body, threatening a drop in BW’s licence income if BW increased the cost of hire boat licences.

In September 2008, BW issued a consultation document to the User Groups entitled ‘Boat Licence Fees – For information and comment on by Waterway User Groups’. This document included a proposal to increase the licence fee for boats without home moorings by £150 in comparison to the published tariff. BW also proposed to introduce higher licence fees for widebeam boats. However, once again boaters organised and beat these plans back.

Then in 2017, CRT announced that the licence fees system was “outdated” with the ridiculous lie that licence fees have never been reviewed. They argued that licence fees were “complex”, “unfair”, “outdated” and that their consultation into the fees would be “cost neutral”. This so called cost neutral consultation had three stages and had to change research company for the third stage.

We in the NBTA were involved in each part of the consultation. All the way through this process, CRT attempted to divide boaters, putting forward the question again about charging boats without home moorings more than those with. Therefore, we spent this time preparing to be ready to ballot our members for a licence fee strike if we had to. We weren’t going to let CRT price us off the water!

Again, it didn’t come to that. CRT decided not to take us on at that time. So they decided to halve the early payment discount, pick on wider boats and further made a statement saying they would think about how to deal with the London waterways problem; separately. This thinking has led CRT to plan to implement chargeable moorings on 1.1km of London’s regular towpath. In a meeting between NBTA and CRT this year, CRT revealed that they still haven’t implemented this plan because they haven’t been able to hire someone suitable to manage the project. While that plan is still apparently to be implemented, CRT has reached back into the bag of tricks and found the same old question, once again hoping for different reply.

As in the past, we must show the waterways authorities we aren’t a community that they can push around and do whatever they want with. We aren’t a social problem that needs culling, our way of life is worth defending and together we can beat them back! Please get involved. If you think the lifestyle of travelling without a fixed address should continue to be defended, then join us here: https://nbtalondon.co.uk/about/welcome-to-the-nbta/ or email nbtalondon@gmail.com.

Featured image by David Mould on Flickr

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Elmbridge moorings under threat from Council’s proposed Public Space Protection Order

June 7, 2023 stopboatlicencediscrimination Leave a comment

Elmbridge Council is seeking consultation over a proposed Public Space Protection Order (PSPO). The PSPO would, among other things, give the Council powers to issue fixed penalty notice (FPN) fines of up to £400 for mooring on the Thames for longer than 24 hours. The affected sections of river maintained by the Council would include Albany Reach, Cowey Sale Open Space, Ditton Reach and City Wharf, Hurst Park Open Space, and Cigarette Island. Also proposed are restrictions on fishing, camping, and lighting of open fires such as BBQs.

This is not the first time that Elmbridge Council has proposed restrictions on boat moorings. In 2019, the NBTA responded to proposals by the Council for an extended PSPO that would cover areas moored on by itinerant liveaboard boaters. There is an existing PSPO in Walton-on-Thames town centre, in effect since March 2021.

Up to £400 fine for mooring on Albany Reach and Cigarette Island

According to guidance from the Local Government Authority, a PSPO gives councils the authority to “prohibit specified activities, and/or require certain things to be done by people engaged in particular activities, within a defined public area”. They are intended to target behaviour considered anti-social in particular, such as drinking in or littering of public areas. PSPOs can be in place for up to three years after which they are reviewed. There is no limit on the number of renewals of a PSPO.

PSPOs are intended to address specific behaviours which are having or are likely to have a detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality. Elmbridge Council’s order proposes restrictions on “unauthorised” mooring, which the Council and Environment Agency define as mooring for longer than 24 hours in a location. This is not of itself damaging to quality of life for people in the locality. As the NBTA to the Council’s 2019 PSPO consultation, “there is nothing inherently anti-social in mooring a boat that is your home on a river bank… the simple act of mooring a boat on a river bank does not of its nature have a detrimental effect on quality of life.”

The Council’s proposal claims that “boats moored without permission” has led to “increased littering and noise pollution”. Restricting the mooring of boats on the Thames does not, however, address the question of “unregistered” boats as all boats, regardless of their permission on the waterways, will be penalised by such an order. The Council should instead address littering and noise pollution directly, rather than liveaboard boaters as a proxy. As Surrey Live reported in 2020, some liveaboard boaters with licences have been confronted along the canal, in an “atmosphere of enforcement” where any distinction between “legitimate” and “unauthorised” moorings is eroded.

Indeed, organisations such as civil and human rights group Liberty have criticised the powers behind PSPOs for the “vague definition of what can be criminalised [that is] ripe for abuse”, with many councils issuing fines for homelessness and rough sleeping. According to BBC and the Manifesto Club, Councils have issued fines under PSPOs for unauthorised cycling, spitting, school drop-offs, begging, and putting up an A-frame, as well as instituting curfews for under 16s. The existing PSPO in force in Walton-on-Thames town centre prohibits riding “cycle, skateboard, scooter or hoverboard in a dangerous or anti-social way”, which seems gives Councils the scope to choose what is considered “anti-social”. There is a danger that Council’s wield the power of PSPOs to criminalise any behaviour of their choosing, in this case the mooring of boats.

Above all, such mooring restrictions will have the greatest impact on the most vulnerable in the boating community, displacing individuals and potentially criminalising them for attempting to live on a boat. Avoidance of negative impact on vulnerable communities is explicitly called for in the LGA guidance. The consultation webpage states that an Equality Impact Assessment has been conducted, but the assessment has not been provided and there is no guarantee that at-risk boaters have been taken into consideration.

If Elmbridge Council is concerned about anti-social behaviour in its borough, we suggest that the Council address those precise behaviours. Restrictions on mooring specifically target liveaboard boaters, and especially the most vulnerable in our community. The consultation is closing on 11th June 2023. The Council has not yet implemented the proposed PSPO.

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Remembering the Great Canal Strike – A century on

April 21, 2023 stopboatlicencediscrimination 1 Comment

This summer will mark 100 years since the Great Canal Strike when boaters brought England’s canals to a standstill in a dispute over pay and conditions. The action centred around Braunston in the Midlands where the Grand Union and Oxford Canals meet and where one of the country’s largest canal carrying companies was based at the time.

In August 1923, Fellows Morton & Clayton (FMC) announced they would be cutting boatmen’s wages by an average of 6.47% from the following Monday, the 13th. Within days, up to 60 boats moored up along both sides of the two canals blocking FMC’s wharf. For 14 long, hard weeks, canal workers and their families took over the busiest junction on the network in one of the inland waterway’s first strikes.

The workers were called out on strike by the recently formed Transport and General Workers’ Union (TGWU). This new union was led by Harry Gosling who was behind the famous London dock strike of 1889. He had previously been the General Secretary of the union formed by the river workers’ following their collective action – the Amalgamated Society of Watermen, Lightermen and Bargemen.

Opposite the towing path bridge over the arm that used to lead to the Oxford Canal (Pic: *Dennis Ashby Collection*)

In January 1922, a number of transport unions, including the Watermen’s Society, joined to form the TGWU and Gosling became its president. The canals had not been unionised before, but canal workers were soon singled out as a sector needing union assistance after many years of neglect. It’s said that boatmen on the canals compared notes with Thames dockers in the pubs around Limehouse and Brentford.

Boater families gather under a railway viaduct (Pic: Dennis Ashby Collection)

In just over a year, the TGWU had negotiated agreements on wages and conditions with many of the larger canal carrying companies, but the FMC at Braunston were determined to go ahead with these cuts, despite protest from the union’s rep. Many of the company’s 600 workers walked out.

The TGWU sent Mr Sam Brookes to oversee the strike and support the workers in Braunston. While there, he organised reading and writing classes for the strikers and their families, many of whom were illiterate, as well as concerts and church services. The boaters increased the
population of the small Northamptonshire village by nearly a third and many children started at the local school during their stay.

Six weeks into the standoff, the company threatened boatmen with the sack and eviction from their homes on the boats. The union advised the workers to continue the fight. Faced with losing both their livelihoods and their homes, their protests were said to be colourful and noisy. The
company employed scabs to try and unload the thousand tonnes of tea and sugar from the boats so the cargo could be delivered by road. An already tense situation escalated further when the police were brought in to oversee the transfer of cargo. Needless to say, one boat captain helped the wharf’s foreman take a dip in the canal.

FMC Steamer brought to be unloaded with police blocking the road (Pic: Dennis Ashby Collection)

After over three months with no pay, the strike was finally taken to arbitration. The industrial court ruled that a 6.47% average cut was too high and instead ruled for a 5% reduction staggered over two months to lessen the impact on workers. This was deemed a success at a time when wages across all industries were facing harsh cuts and many canal workers felt as though they’d avoided a larger blow to their already paltry incomes.

The 1923 canal strike was an important moment in the struggle for worker’s rights in this country and led to many fundamental improvements in the working and living conditions of boating
families. The TGWU went on to become part of the UNITE union and the actions of those 60 or so boating families shows the long history of solidarity and resistance we continue to celebrate on the inland waterways today.

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Boaters left out in the cold over the Energy Bills Support Scheme

April 21, 2023 stopboatlicencediscrimination 1 Comment

At the time of publication, itinerant boaters have still not received an energy grant from the Government, or been offered a user-friendly way in which to attain this grant. Most households across the UK are now into their sixth month of receiving help towards extortionate energy bills, yet the Government are still dragging their heels when it comes to itinerant boaters and other off grid communities.

All households in the UK were promised the £400 grant back in March last year, and an article published on the 1st April 2022 on the gov.uk website clearly states:

“If you live in a park home, houseboat or off the grid…The government has confirmed that further funding will be available to provide equivalent support of £400 for energy bills for the 1% of households who are not eligible for the discount. This includes households without a domestic electricity meter and a direct relationship with an electricity supplier, for example if you live in a park home, houseboat or you live off the grid.”

Depending on how the above is interpreted, itinerant boaters could be included under either the “houseboat” or living off grid examples. Either way, it seemed like we were included as we obviously do not have a domestic electricity meter or a direct relationship with an electricity supplier and therefore meet the criteria.

Since then, the Government have released several announcements regarding the EBSS, including an additional £200 Alternative Fuel Payment for those not using mains gas. However, none of their literature has directly referred to itinerant boaters, leaving us with a vague assumption that we will receive it at some stage in the future, via some unknown means.

In an attempt to find a good solution on how and when itinerant boaters will receive the EBSS, the National Bargee Travellers Association have been in talks with the relevant Government bodies for some time, and thanks to their efforts, a work around solution is now being trialled.

Unfortunately, the best solution the Government could offer was a perplexing arrangement whereby the applicant applied for the energy grant, knowing it would be rejected as it would not meet the criteria needed, then uses this rejection to apply for another grant from their Local Authority. This convoluted approach failed however, as Local Councils were neither informed nor consulted, with many simply replying as such, adding they had no budget for it

Therefore, we still do not have a definitive answer on how or when the majority of itinerant boaters will receive the energy grant. With many boaters spending upwards of £200 a month on heating this winter, the EBSS could relieve the difficult choice between heat or food that numerous folk may be facing.

As the winter months dwindle off into Spring, we are left wondering, will we ever get help to heat our homes?

Article, nbta london, Newsletter

CRT SELLING OFF ASSETS…

March 13, 2023 stopboatlicencediscrimination Leave a comment

Ever wondered where to go to buy second hand industrial grade machinery? No, not just Stanstead Abbots summer bootsale, you could try Industry Asset Services Ltd (iaservices.co.uk). And were you to visit this industrial equipment auction site, you’d quite quickly find plenty of recognisable CRT equipment sold or on sale. Mainly boats; Piling Workboats, craning boats (and the cranes), rubbish barges, even the CRT patrol boat usually moored at Enfield Lock. But the CRT own much more than just boats, and it seems that if it can be sold, it IS being sold. There’s been diggers, trailers, even replacement beams for lock gates sold off through this site.

Well why would CRT sell this stuff? The only explanation CRT gave when questioned was

that it: “would usually be the case that these boats and items are surplus to the Trust’s requirements or are no longer required in general.”

Which sounds more like, to make/ save some money. Seems fairly reasonable. Any organisation responsible for physical work and upkeep is going to need specialist machinery, tools and vehicles, and those assets will need maintenance themselves, and in some cases re- placing from time to time. So CRT are selling these things because they’re buying new ones right? Well, no. They are simply out- sourcing work in many cases. No need to have a patrol boat if you just pay more money out to a 3rd party company to do your patrols for you…

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HISTORY OF THE RIVER LEA

January 5, 2023 stopboatlicencediscrimination Leave a comment

The River Lea has long been a multi-use space, shared by all kinds of craft. In recent years, however, the Canal and River Trust has emphasised the rights of some river users over others. This is especially true as the Trust attempts to force through bans on mooring on the site of its “Water Safety Zones”, which will prevent itinerant boat dwellers from mooring in these locations for the 14 days which applies elsewhere on the waterways.

The Trust claims that more “no mooring” sites are necessary for the safety of other canal users, such as rowers and kayakers. This is despite scant evidence that moored boats cause collisions and the fact that the Lea Navigation is among the widest waterways of the country.

Moreover, boats and large barges have been using and mooring on the Lea for many years, including in places where the Trust is calling to ban moored boats. The inset photos show boats and industrial barges moored at some of these very locations.

Figure 1: Hackney Power Station, Millfields 1950-69

Figure 1, from between 1950 to 1969, shows barges unloading at Hackney Power Station, near Millfields Park in Clapton, now the site of a recycling centre. Two stretches of canal here are threatened with restriction under the Trust’s “Safety Zones”, where previously widebeam barges have moored for access.

Figure 4: Hackney Power Station, Millfields
1950-69

Figure 5: Hackney Power Station, 1950-69

Figure 6: Hackney Power Station, 1950-69

Judging from other photos from this period (Fig.4, 5, 6), this section of the navigation near the former power station has been used by considerably larger boats than tend to operate on the river today. Not only this, but Lea Rowing Club, some of the most vocal proponents of the “Safety Zones”, operated on the navigation during these years, when timber and coal barges were evidently on the water too. The waterways have been shared for some time, and it’s unreasonable that this should change now.

In a later photograph from 1973 (Figure 2), a barge is visible moored on the inside of the shallow bend leading round to Milllfields Park. Across from the Princess of Wales pub, where the CRT is proposing no mooring sections, figure 3 shows barges double-moored on the offside. Before the Lea Bridge was constructed, the river was crossed at this site by Jeremy’s and Smith’s ferries as early as 1747, according to A History of the County of Essex: Vol. 6. Passenger boats were therefore mooring at this site as long as over 200 years ago.

The scene in figure 7 will be familiar as the view from the eastern bank of the river in Hackney Wick, opposite Omega Works and looking north toward Barge East. This photo also dates from between 1950 and 1969, and shows wide-beam timber barges moored at a site which the Trust considers unfit for mooring of boats which are homes, but perfectly suitable for more lucrative restaurant boats and water sports landings.

The Canal and River Trust continues to claim that canal boats and liveaboard boaters have not been able to moor in its “Water Safety Zones”, for the benefit of other users. Clearly, there have been large craft sharing the river with others for some decades now.

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NEW ECO MOORING PLANS

January 5, 2023 stopboatlicencediscrimination Leave a comment

Westminster council have just held a consultation period for a new eco mooring zone in Paddington. If plans go ahead this will be the third eco zone in London. The other eco zones are either side of the Islington Tunnel and in Kings Cross in the borough of Camden.

In the Paddington eco mooring plans they contextualise the need for eco moorings and how it can benefit boaters and residents. They also mention pollution has caused the hospital ward near the canal to close on occasions. The council said they could not share any details about the cause of the pollution due to GDPR reasons. NBTA London is in the process of finding out more about the hospital ward closures and the reasons for them by means of a Freedom of Information request.

Paddington Basin, picture by Marc Barrot/Flickr

One particular aspect of the plan is appealing. They have presented the idea of giving grants to boaters to cover the costs of converting boats so they are able to use the electric points (total of £1445 per boat for wiring, fixtures, consumer unit, electrical appliance). However, this mock costing does not consider labour costs and is vague so we can’t be sure whether it’s suitable for all boats. How they would decide which boaters receive the funding is also not clear. As stated in the pamphlet, these conversion grants are not guaranteed. The council will have to apply for funding but there is a worry that the conversion grants idea is tokenistic.

NBTA London met with Westminster council to ask for more details about the eco zone plans. Present at the meeting were 2 members of K&A consultants, a member of Westminster council and a member of CRT. The Westminster council member played the politician and gave no real answers to our questions stating that the plan is dependent on the results of the consultation and available funding. It was clear the council didn’t want to commit to anything. However, we did propose some ideas on how they could make the eco moorings suitable for more boaters which were received positively:

Provide electrical heaters that can be borrowed by boaters.

This would mean boats with off-shore power hook-up wouldn’t need to adapt their boats and they could plug the heaters into their existing plugs.

Integrate a battery charger into the electrical point.

This would mean boats wouldn’t need to run their engines or diesel generators and they wouldn’t need to buy any extra appliances to fulfil their electrical needs. Especially as not all boats will be suitable for conversion.

King’s Cross, Regents Canal, picture by Diamond Geezer/Flickr

All London boroughs have clean air plans to meet clean air targets because illegal levels of air pollution are still being recorded in London, including in the city of Westminster (levels of nitrogen dioxide have been recorded up to 50% higher than legal levels in various areas across London). Despite the pollution from boats being negligible in comparison to the pollution caused by road transport and domestic/commercial heating systems, where we can, it’s good to reduce our emissions. However, in order to transition, boaters need time and support. Stoves and diesel engines are crucial to heat boats and to supply enough power during the Winter months, and are necessary for the majority of the waterways that are without electrical charging points. Then there is the issue of space and money to make boats suitable to use the electric points.

National Bargee Travellers Association – London Branch

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