Tag Archives: Boat cull

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CRT UP TO THEIR OLD TRICKS AGAIN

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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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Article, Events, nbta london, News

Hundreds Attend NBTA Hackney Protest Picnic

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Hundreds of boaters, local residents and land-based supporters turned out on Sunday 26th of June to attend the National Bargee Travellers Association’s (NBTA) Hackney Protest Picnic in a continued show of resistance to the Canal & River Trust’s (CRT) ongoing attacks on the capital’s liveaboard boating community.

The picnic, which began at midday and ran into the late afternoon, was held on Walthamstow Marshes opposite the Anchor and Hope pub. On a day lit by glorious summer sun, the capital’s boating community came together in a joyous show of solidarity and celebrated their life on the water with conversation, live music, mural painting, refreshments and a vegan BBQ. With hundreds in attendance, the event was a chance for local, land-based residents to learn more about boaters, and to hear from the NBTA about the attacks that their community has sustained from CRT over the past few years, as well as the lively and ongoing campaigns to preserve their way of life that have grown up in response.

Picture by Amy Dyduch
Picture by Amy Dyduch
Picture by Marcus Trower

Marcus Trower, NBTA London branch secretary and one of the event’s organisers said: “London’s boater community has endured years of attacks on their way of life from the CRT – everything from unlawful attempts to evict boaters from their homes to the current Water ‘Safety’ Zones that will drastically restrict boaters ability to live and work around the River Lea. This Protest Picnic is an opportunity to not only draw attention to the issues that boaters are facing from the CRT, but to also celebrate our unique community, way of life and contribution to Hackney’s own rich public life. Those of us that have moored in Hackney consider spending time here to be an essential part of London’s boating culture, and one of the joys of making our lives on water; we’re looking forward to welcoming as many people as possible to Walthamstow Marshes to celebrate that fact with good food, music, conversation and continued solidarity for our fight against CRT’s boat cull.”

Boaters marching on CRT headquarters in Little Venice on 26th March 2022: picture by the NBTA

With the CRT recently rowing back on commitments to consult with boaters about the removal of moorings in so-called ‘Water Safety Zones’ on the River Lee, the Protest Picnic comes at a time of uncertainty for many boaters, many of whom have been harassed with enforcement notices and threatened with eviction from their homes. Sunday’s celebration of boater life was the latest in a series of events which protest against the CRT’s plans to drastically cull the number of casual moorings across London, and demonstrate the strength and vibrancy of the liveaboard community whose lives these plans will negatively impact. In April 2021, a flotilla of boaters made its way through Broxbourne to raise awareness of CRT’s attacks in the local community and in June 2021 a similar flotilla protest through Hackney drew thousands of boaters and supporters alike. In March of this year, hundreds of boaters and supporters marched on the CRT’s main office in Little Venice to explain how these discriminatory policy changes are threatening people’s livelihoods and intentionally pricing boaters out of their homes.

Boaters in formation during the Hackney Flotilla to protest CRT’s Water Safety Zones: picture by the NBTA

Ian McDowell, chair of the London branch of NBTA explained some of the reasons behind boaters continuing resistance to the CRT’s plans: “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. 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.”

This event was part of NBTA’s campaign against the CRT Water Safety Zones.

Land-dwelling local residents enjoy vegan hotdogs with members of the boating community at the 26/05 Protest Picnic: picture by Helen Brice

News

Undercutting London’s boaters

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London’s waterways have received significantly more attention and usage of various forms in more recent years. Following decades of decline, London’s boaters have played a significant role in the reclamation and revitalisation of these spaces. However, this contribution seems increasingly undesirable by the authority that manages the waterways.

Since 2012, the Canal & River Trust (CRT) have assumed guardianship of 2000 miles of the UK’s canals and rivers from the state-owned British Waterways (BW). As a not-for-profit charitable trust, the CRT have placed an increased emphasis on wellbeing in their agenda for their waterways’ users.

There has been a notable increase in and heterogeneous uses of the River Stort, Lee Navigation, Regent’s Canal, Hertford Union Canal, and the lower Grand Union Canal. Cyclists, walkers, joggers, rowers, and kayakers are all user groups that the CRT appear happy to see using the waterways in increased numbers, but not all increases in usage seem to be so welcome.

The general trend of increased usage has brought a range of advantages, including an increased diversification of users of the waterways, yet this has occurred during a period of increased economic and social strain for many living in London. London’s housing crisis has led a relatively small proportion to search for viable living arrangements away from the increasingly unaffordable rental costs ‘offered’ by the housing market, joining the existing communities of liveaboard boaters on the cut.

According to the CRT’s National Boat Count, boat numbers were rising for a period in the London area. However this increase in use appears less welcomed by the CRT when compared to the increase in leisure uses of the estate they manage, despite liveaboard boaters paying licensing fees to the CRT, yielding them a growth in income revenue from boaters.

The CRT do not have legal powers to stop or restrict the number of licensed boats on the water, and as such are seeking “creative solutions to help manage growing boat numbers […] to address [the] challenges” this brings them. In lieu of the limited powers the CRT possess, it is difficult to envisage any “creative” solutions that would be equitable across the wide range of boaters that live on London’s waterways, such as introducing surcharges or fees for certain uses of the canals. However, this is occurring in spite of the CRT’s own 2020 data showing a 2.2% reduction of boats in the region.

The apparent need to manage the volume of liveaboard boats in London is not a new struggle for boaters. Back in 2010, BW said that were “more boats moored along the Lee than are desirable” and attempted to zone London’s waterways into “neighbourhoods”. Due to the anger and push back from boater communities, this plan was eventually dropped.

The National Bargee Travellers Association (NBTA) has described the CRT’s 2018 London Mooring Strategy (LMS) as “a strategy to help clear London’s waterways of boat dwellers and turn it into a London waterway leisure and business park. It is the perfect recipe for gentrification of the waterways.” Amongst other issues, the LMS includes a reduction of mooring time available for boaters at 22 sites, with increased surveillance and enforcement on the sites with reduced time limits.

The LMS has not been completed, yet the CRT are currently conducting a new survey to help them strategise new ways to manage the “very high and increasing” boat population. However, the CRT are yet to provide supporting information for the assumed problems caused by the volume of boats, or substantiating data on the apparently negative efficacies of an increased liveaboard population.

The current survey appears flawed in a range of ways, particularly as it is strewn with leading questions. As an example, they ask “In your own words what would you want the Trust to do to manage boat numbers in busy areas?” This assumes that the volume of boats is a problem, but are more boats a problem? More boats means more boaters, and as such a more vibrant and neighbourly community, helping to increase safety for all users of the waterways. Framing an increase in the number of boats as a problem evades other opportunities for the CRT to support thriving liveaboard communities by increasing the facilities offered.

It is also noteworthy that the majority of the survey is collecting qualitative data. This is welcome, as it provides an opportunity for participants to offer detailed, subjective understandings of their experiences of living aboard. However, whilst by no means impossible, such rich data can be difficult to generalise from in the development of an organisational strategy, and can lead accusations of cherry picking data and quote mining.

The global pandemic has created further tensions for the CRT and their wellbeing agenda. The initial lockdown saw posters erected to encourage “local” usage of towpaths, without any clarification of what that meant, causing confusion and anxiety for cyclists, walkers, and boaters alike. As soon as the lockdown was lifted, new posters replaced the old ones, and these actively encouraged the use of the use of towpaths for leisure purposes.

However, much of the towpath is difficult or impossible to navigate whilst staying two metres- or even one metre- from other users and boats. This exposed people to unnecessarily high risks, particularly moored boaters that were enduring the increased risk while remaining aboard their homes.

As with so many other examples of authorities exerting their political agenda in the dehumanising process of managing properties and estates, the lives of those impacted by this ‘management’ are treated with neglect and disdain. As the CRT seeks to offer leisure facilities and develop greater commercial enterprise on the waterways, the lives and rights of liveaboard boaters are treated as an unfortunate hangover of the historic canals of London.

The London branch of the NBTA continues to fight the increasing gentrification of London’s waterways and is planning further action to protect liveaboard boaters and to ensure that the waterways remain for the use of everyone, not just for those with access to resources or for business to expropriate money from a public asset.

#stoptheboatcull