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
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
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
The Canal & River Trust’s (CRT) failing ’Water Safety Zones’ scheme on the River Lee has been dealt another blow after a risk assessment confirmed that the expensive and unpopular zones are ‘not necessary’.
Once referred to by CRT as ‘Water Sports Zones’, these designated areas on both the Lower and Upper Lee – close to the Lea Rowing Club in Hackney and Broxbourne Rowing Club in Hertfordshire – are a part of CRT’s strategy to remove the number of places where boaters can moor, and to force the itinerant liveaboard community off the water.
Initially CRT had plans to get rid of 550 mooring spaces along the River Lea, where boaters have the right to moor for up to 14 days at a time. Following a sustained campaign of resistance from the boating community (many of whom have continued to moor on the sites despite harassment and failed attempts at enforcement) CRT relented on the full threatened 550 mooring spaces. However, they continue to try and eliminate 295 mooring spaces.
CRT have been unable to provide a clear reason for these ‘No Mooring’ Zones, and despite constant requests have not released any assessment that explains why these sites should be ‘No Mooring’. The National Bargee Travellers Association (NBTA) finally ran out of patience and commissioned an independent risk assessment at three of these ‘No Mooring’ Zones themselves. This assessment, carried out by a qualified and experienced IOSH and IIRSM Risk Assessment professional at three of the ‘No Mooring’ Zones, concludes the following:
‘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’.
The resulting verdict goes on to suggest that it is more important for craft – including row boats – to manage their speed effectively to avoid any potential incidents.
The ‘No Mooring’ Zones policy is designed to make life difficult for many boaters, and could ultimately drive them off the water and out of their homes.
Daniel Prada is an itinerant liveaboard boater who has been moored on and off on the ‘No Mooring Zones’ this year, including on one of the sites the risk assessment covers. He said:
“It’s clear to me that this has never been about safety. The Lower Lee is one of the widest waterways in the whole of CRT’s South East waterway region and I’ve never seen any issues with the navigation at all because of moored boats. Honestly, this just feels like another way for the CRT to put pressure on boaters and make our life more difficult. This is my home – it’s where I’m raising my daughter. To have CRT try and force me out of it just makes me more resolved to defend it so that the waterways can remain a place for everyone.”
CRT has recently put out a series of announcements regarding their money issues, blaming everyone but themselves for the holes in their finances. However, a Freedom of Information request shows that as of 31 May 2023, the Trust has wasted anything up to £249,680.09* on the Water Safety Zones – much of it spent on outsourced enforcement contracts with companies like District Enforcement.
Marcus Trower, of NBTA London
Marcus Trower, of the London branch of the National Bargee Travellers Association (NBTA), has also been continuing to defy the ‘No Mooring’ Zones. He said:
“The NBTA has continuously tried to engage with the CRT to address legitimate safety concerns, but this risk assessment confirms what we knew all along – that the so-called ‘water safety zones’ have never been about safety, and have always been about trying to erase our community from our homes, impoverishing the waterways as a result. Boaters have mounted an incredible resistance to this dishonest, wasteful and fundamentally doomed policy for years, ever since it was first announced. The news that CRT has been lying about their intentions all along, and wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds – which we provide through our licence fees – in the process will only galvanise our community further. CRT needs to stop mismanaging both their finances and the waterways in general, and get their house in order. We will continue to resist, protest and push back at any and all further attacks on the boater community with all means at our disposal.”
No Mooring Sign in the ‘Safety Zones’ covered by boaters with a bin bag
The campaign of resistance against the ‘Water Safety Zones’ continues in full swing. Many boats continue to ignore the ‘no mooring’ signs and resist CRT’s campaign of harassment, and in May of this year hundreds attended the NBTA Spring Fayre – a celebration of the boater community held at one of the key sites that the CRT is trying to erase boaters from in Hackney.
*CRT caveats this figure, saying it is the total spend in the ‘Water Safety’ Zones, and so may cover costs relating to other Trust activities. However, after the recent spate of new ‘No Mooring’ signs erected in both areas, this number will certainly have risen since May already.
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
Anyone who takes the time to read Canal and Rivers Trust’s (CRT) regular cure for insomnia – the Boaters’ Update – will know that the Trust likes to go on about how they are in charge of a 200 year old system, naturally giving the impression that they are doing an outstanding job of it. But this raises a couple of questions – can the system really be called 200 years old, and are they doing an outstanding job?
Have you ever thought about how old everything really is? Take for example one of the most iconic pieces of canal infrastructure – locks, and in particular lock gates. Lock gates have a life span of…25 years, so you definitely won’t be using any 200 year old lock gates in the near future. The same goes for the towpaths which now support a lot more traffic than the original towpaths were designed for (the Regent’s Canal towpath goes all the way back to…1979)…and the metal armco piling which holds the canal in… definitely not 200 years old. I’m sure you can think of other things. It really is Trigger’s Broom from the British comedy, Only Fools and Horses made real! (“with 17 heads and 14 handles; how can it be the same broom” …)
Damage at Toddbrook Reservoir Dam
But what about where truly old things need looking after? Well CRT are bigging-up their impending work on the Toddbrook reservoir dam in the Peak district. The dam was completed in 1840. In 2016 one of the spillways, which had been added in 1970, started to collapse following a week long deluge of rain. The reservoir was full to the brim and the town of Whaley Bridge had to be evacuated for six days as the 80 foot tall dam – which held back over one and a quarter billion litres of water – was at risk of breaching. While the poor design and build of the spillway was central to the collapse, CRT’s poor maintenance and reporting systems were identified as major contributory factors. Of course, no mention of this is made in your latest Boaterzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Update.
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 