The green space in Harlesden, which is many boaters’ most popular West London mooring, is being gentrified by developers in tandem with the mayor’s office. The ‘regeneration’ claims to be creating a ‘boaters’ paradise’, but will involve replacing the grass verge with mooring rings (which are easy to remove in the future) and will take away 3 visitor mooring spaces which will be replaced with ‘community boats and a canoe pontoon. Because the canal to the East and West of Harlesden is too shallow to moor on, this reduces capacity in Harlesden by approximately 20%.
Towpath in Harlesden (Image by diamond geezer/Flickr)
Apparently as a compensation measure, the developers are installing an elsan and water point at the West end of the stretch, but we remember that CRT promised us facilities years ago. So, in reality, these moorings spaces are being taken without any compensation measures being made. This is yet another example of CRT working with developers behind our backs and to our detriment.
While the NBTA have objected to the planning proposal, we are considering the next steps we should take to fight for the moorings.
If you would like to get involved in this, please email nbtalondon@gmail.com to let us know that you want to help.
For more information about the development, see here:
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
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 DyduchPicture by Amy DyduchPicture 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.”
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.
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.”
The Environment Act 2021, which became law on 9th November, will remove the partial exemption for vessels from the Clean Air Act 1993.
Local authorities will now have the power to apply their Smoke Control Areas to vessels moored within the areas, under Section 73 and Schedule 12 of the Act. CRT and other navigation authorities have been asked to provide contact information for boat owners to local authorities where they need it to enforce Smoke Control Areas.
There is an exemption for smoke which is created to propel the vessel or to generate electricity. There is no exemption for heating. Local authorities can now impose fines of at least £175 for breaches of Smoke Control regulations.
Friends double moored whilst frozen in near Kensal Cemetery, Winter 2017
There is a danger that this will be used as a tool to remove boats from areas where the local authorities are opposed to boat dwellers, or where local residents are hostile to liveaboard boaters. Tower Hamlets Council have already started harassing boaters. Notices from the council have been issued to boaters about their engines which go much further than is stated in the new Act. NBTA London has sent a complaint to the council, telling them they are going further than new Act gives them ability to do.
The new Act has opened the door to more attacks on our community.
We must stand together.
Please get involved in NBTA: more people involved means we can do more to defend our way of life.
Get in touch if you’d like to join us, we’d love to hear from you.
The Canal and River Trust (CRT) is preparing to launch an assault on the rights of boaters. Specifically, their rights to moor on large stretches of the historic River Lea, a river which has been populated by boat owners of all flavours dating back to the Bronze Age.
They are pursuing this strategy in the name of safety: they claim moored boats are a hazard to the users of the waterway. We do not agree. In fact, it is CRT themselves who are allowing the River Lea to become a dangerous place. They are allowing it to become dangerous through a lack of care, a lack of investment and a lack of sense. There are too many places which are too shallow, which make it impossible to moor close to the bank or even moor at all, in some places it even makes it hard to navigate.
The Lea has not been properly dredged for many years, 11 to be precise – and that was just the Lower Lea. Waltham Town Lock to Kings Weir hasn’t been done since 2009 and doesn’t even have a record of when above Waltham Town Lock has been done last.
And why, 11 years ago was the cost of dredging the Lower Lea deemed acceptable? The answer is simple, the City of London and by extension British Waterways did not want important, international visitors to the Olympic park to have to contend with the putrid smells and depressing sights of the nearby river which had been neglected. At the time, Simon Bamford, General Manager of British Waterways (BW) in London, is quoted as saying ‘[water] quality on the River Lee Navigation has been an issue of concern for many years, affecting local residents, wildlife, boaters and other waterway users’.
The reason for the poor quality? To put it quite simply, a deluge of raw sewage overflows brought down from Deephams Sewage Works in north London. 11 years later and that issue has not gone away! Together with the 2018 Lower Lea river oil spill, the Lower Lea is fast becoming a toxic mess that is hazardous not only to the humans that spend time within its proximity, but also the animals that call it home.
If safety was a real issue for CRT, rather than removing places where we can moor, they should be looking at positive actions which would get wide support, like dredging.
Canal and River Trust (CRT) are planning to change visitor moorings in central London into paid, pre-bookable moorings.
They are proposing ten locations, totalling 1.1 kilometres of towpath between Kensal and Viccy Park, where moorings that are currently free 7 or 14 day moorings will become 7 day moorings costing £10 to £12 per night. The fees that are being asked for would equal between £70 and £84 per week with no mention of how CRT will manage late arrivals, cancelled bookings, or over-stayers.
The proposals would mean for many boaters who cannot afford these significant fees a very long run from Kings Cross to Willesden that may well cause a lot of stress. It is another attempt by CRT to push out poorer boaters from central London. This is nothing less than social cleansing of the waterways.
CRT are also planning to make it an ‘improper mooring’ offence to moor a widebeam and a narrowbeam next to each other, no matter how wide the river or canal is. While we understand that this may be sensible where the waterway is narrow, such a blanket rule is unnecessary and unfair, especially given their plans to further reduce free mooring spaces in London.
On Saturday 26 March 2022, hundreds of boaters marched on Canal & River Trust’s (CRT) main London office to protest the Trust’s continued attack on the capital’s liveaboard boating community.
Starting in Regents Park, the protest marched to CRT’s offices in Little Venice where they were addressed by speakers from the boating community and land based supporters and engaged with the public to explain how these discriminatory policy changes are threatening people’s livelihoods.
The protest was hailed as a great success by Ian McDowell, Chair of the London branch of the National Bargee Travellers Association, which has helped organize boaters’ opposition to CRT’s attacks.
Since London’s boaters forced CRT into a consultation on their plan to remove up to 550 mooring places on the River Lea in 2021, the Trust has doubled down on their plans to cull boats from London’s waterways including:
• Bringing in more reduced mooring times on the Grand Union; • Implementing banning boats from 295 ‘no mooring’ spaces in ‘safety zones’ despite indicating they wouldn’t; • Turning a blind eye to criminal damage of safety features of the River Lea inside a so-called ‘safety zone’; • Proposing 1.1km of new chargeable moorings and further mooring restrictions in Central London; • Revealing that the Trust no longer takes complaints about their policies.
The National Bargee Travellers Association (NBTA) believe this is further evidence of CRT’s plans to prioritise leisure over living on Britain’s waterways. Early in 2021, CRT announced that they would be restricting moorings along 10km of the river Lea, claiming that mooring in these ‘Water Safety Zones’ was unsafe. The NBTA, together with the London boating community, fought back by organising two flotillas involving over 70 boats and 1000+ people. CRT was forced to engage boaters in consultation, the result of which showed boaters are concerned about safety, but the ‘Water Safety Zones’ would not make the river safer. The ‘River Lea Forum’ was established with representatives from all interested user groups to discuss what would make the waterways safer. However, CRT ignored boaters’ voices by imposing many of the ‘Safety Zones’ before the first Forum even took place.
In October 2021, ‘no mooring’ signs started appearing on the River Lea and boaters moored in these areas were told they would have enforcement action taken against them under the new ‘Improper Mooring Process’. CRT claims that these sites come under its existing rules on where boats are permitted to moor, but these are the exact same stretches that they’d planned to designate as no mooring as part of their ‘Water Safety Zones’, making these new rules for areas where boaters have lawfully moored without any penalty for many years.
On 10 January 2022, enforcement started on the ‘no mooring’ sites and since then, CRT has continued to try and intimidate boaters by giving notices threatening to terminate licences and thereby forcing boaters out of their homes. CRT has also employed a third party car parking ‘enforcement’ agency at huge cost to hand out these notices.
Tyrone Halligan, Amelia Friend and their two year old son Isaac.
London houseboat dwellers stage a protest against what they believe is a drive by the Canal & River Trust to force them out, as part of a gentrification process of the UK (particularly London’s) waterways.
Amelia and Tyrone have lived on a boat travelling the London waterways for seven years. Together with their two-year-old son, they spend up to 6 months a year staying in one place to the next along the stretch of the River Lea from Tottenham to Stratford where the ‘no mooring’ signs have gone up. They are currently expecting their second child and worry that they may have to leave the water, and perhaps London, altogether. “This area is our home. My son attends a nursery here and we’re registered with doctors, dentists, and my midwife appointments are in Homerton Hospital. We have built a life within this area and not being able to moor here truly feels as if we are being forced out,” Amelia says. “The stress of receiving abrupt emails, notices and knocks at the door, about where we are moored, in areas we have allowed to be for years previous, is causing us a great deal of stress at a time when, as a young and growing family, we already have a lot going on. No consideration is being given for people who have set up their lives, careers and families in these areas.”
Days before Christmas 2021, CRT made a fresh attempt at trying to take away mooring spaces in the capital by sneaking out another consultation with proposals for paid-for bookable short term moorings of less than 14 days. This, despite their own figures showing that the two ‘test sites’ for these new chargeable moorings have had less than 25% occupancy – most of the year they were wasted moorings. They’re also proposing further areas of restrictions on triple mooring and narrowboat to widebeam mooring – regardless of how wide the navigation is. “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,” argues Ian McDowell, chair of the London branch of NBTA. “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.”
NBTA London demands that CRT concentrates on its mandate to maintain the navigation with things like dredging, rather than persecuting boaters who moor on some of the widest waterways in the country. The Trust must stop destroying boating communities by favouring one kind of boater over another.
NBTA and London Boaters have fought and prevented unfair and destructive attempts like these before, and we will do so again. National Bargee Travellers Association London branch (NBTAL) is supporting boaters in their direct action to disobey the ‘no mooring’ signs through providing a template complaint letter if they do receive a notice and posters to display in windows declaring the boat is moored in protest. Hundreds of boaters have defied CRT’s unfair and unjustified restrictions so far and since we are unable to complain online, now we are marching on CRT’s offices to resist the displacement of boaters and to protect our homes.
Ali was moored at Daubeney Fields. She works for a food and farming charity which advocates for land redistribution and community grow projects. Ali has been on the water for three years. “I’ve been involved in the protest movement against the new CRT restrictions for about a year and a half now, since the safety zones campaign started. I consciously seek out places where the new no mooring locations are. I speak to my neighbours about the restrictions, so that everyone in the community knows about them. And I think it’s important to show up physically against CRT’s attempts to gentrify the waterways even more. These are perfectly great moorings and the idea that they could become paid for or private moorings is really shocking. It’s been a hard year for everyone and the fact that space and land access is going to be restricted is really disgusting.”
“We must take a stand to protect our way of life or they will do everything they can to get rid of it.”
Marcus
Dee, Michelle and their son Io were moored offside at Daubeney fields. They have been on the water for just over a year. Mychelle is a baker. Dee is a gardener and has been clearing up the bankside where they are moored to make a lovely space for their son and other children to play. “It is a good spot to moor and it doesn’t cause any obstruction to anybody; there’s no reason for it not to be moored on. It’s a good spot to be. “The fact that it is a no mooring spot hasn’t really changed our minds about mooring here to be honest. If there was a real reason, like if it felt dangerous, then we wouldn’t moor here, obviously. But there’s no reason. Usually, families moor along here and our son will hopefully start school locally too.”
Lud by his boat
Lud “I work in a cleaning and maintenance job on a dock restoration site by the river. I’ve been on the water since 2016 and I fell in love with boating life and its people. I’m resisting the ‘no mooring zones’ because I think they are not fair to boaters who live on their boats and there’s nothing to justify them.”
Ben and Pru were moored at Matchmaker’s Wharf. They have been on the water for about three years. “We got a notice from the enforcement guy saying that we are wrongfully moored – there are no signs to tell us that we shouldn’t moor here and we haven’t received an email updating us about where we can and can’t moor. “CRT tried to put a load of water safety zones in and then realised that they hadn’t consulted anyone apart from the rowing groups. In a few years it will be impossible to moor in London and it will become just a rich city for rich people. It’s a subtle cultural genocide. They want to take us away.”
Jade and Ted were moored by the Green Bridge (Mandeville St).
Jade & Ted “There is no logic to what CRT are trying to implement. What they say it is about and what it is actually about are two different things. Safety is important, but this is nothing to do with safety”
Matthew was moored on the bend just above the Princess of Wales. He is a musician and he fits out sailaways to sell on. “I love the river and I love the people on it. I think (the safety zones) are absolutely ridiculous really. Boaters made the canal and rivers habitable again, haven’t we? We have a lot to do with the regeneration of the canals in London. The rowers don’t own the river . This is our life, for them it’s just a hobby. It’s really backward thinking and there’s a definite disconnect between us and CRT.”
Jay was moored near a bridge on the Filter Beds. Jay works in theatre, but has just quit his job and is going to cruise to Bristol at some point soon. “I didn’t realise that I was on a no mooring section. I’ve not heard anything, and I’ve been here a week. I think its just CRT saying that boaters are creating a problem, but we’re not. It’s kind of bullshit isn’t it? I don’t think mooring here makes any difference compared to mooring there, or mooring there (pointing to mooring spaces nearby).”
“In a few years it will be impossible to moor in London and it will become just a rich city for rich people. It’s a subtle cultural genocide. They want to take us away.”
Ben & Pru
Amy was moored near a bridge on the filter beds. “I don’t think (the safety zones) are needed. I think it is an unnecessary crackdown on numbers of boats in some of the widest parts of the river. The restrictions are unnecessary and I plan to ignore them for as long as possible.”
Marcus and his son aboard their boat
Marcus was moored by the electricity bridge on the offside. He is home schooler and plumber and has lived on the water for 10 years. “Over the years Canal and River Trust has been taking places where it has been possible to moor away. We must take a stand to protect our way of life or they will do everything they can to get rid of it.”
Canal River and Trust (CRT) is trying to further marginalise us by bringing in more reduced mooring times on the Grand Union, attempting to ban boats from 295 no mooring spaces in ‘safety’ zones on the River Lee, and introducing more mooring restrictions and a total of 1.1 kilometres of new chargeable moorings in Central London.
With the Clean Air Act putting boats under the same clean air zone restrictions as houses, the Government has made it harder for many of us to heat our homes and has opened us up to more harassment from land based NIMBYs.
We must stand together and continue to defend our nomadic way of life. A way of life that has been on the firing line for some time. Some older members of the community will still remember when British Waterways (BW) put forward their Bill to government in 1989, they tried to make it a criminal offence to have a boat without a home mooring on most UK waterways.
Due to action by some great individuals that particular attack was defeated and the Bill was made into the British Waterways Act 1995, where the right for us to have a boat without a home mooring, as long as we use them for navigation and not stay continuously longer than 14 days in one place, unless reasonable, was enshrined in law.
We are in a different time from then and we need more than great individuals; we need collective action. The resistance to ‘safety’ zones on the River Lea is great example of how we can defend our way life.
Let’s come together to march on CRT Little Venice office on Saturday 26th March and using the press, make it heard that Boats are Homes!
In protest, the National Bargee Traveller Association London (NBTAL) organised a ‘Forage for Facilities’ event today to highlight the shortage of water, waste and rubbish disposal points on the London canals.
There were 8 boats in total, with about 40 attendees. The event took place in West London today starting at Old Oak common and involved an expedition of boats, decked out in banners and bunting, hunting the elusive facilities that have been promised by CRT since 2013. The flotilla travelled for five hours, with no facilities in sight. Between Little Venice and Bull’s Bridge there is only one water point for boaters without a home mooring to access.
A recent report by a group formed by CRT and some London boaters called the Better Relationships Group, has found that 4,000 boats, or approximately 8,000 boaters, are sharing 15 working taps and five toilet and rubbish points in the greater London area.
A spokesperson for the NBTA London said:
“After travelling five hours we didn’t find any water points, rubbish disposal facilities or anywhere to empty our toilets. The lack of facilities in this area means that we are unable to fulfill our basic needs without travelling unreasonable distances.
This forces us to live in a way that is comparable to living conditions in third world countries. With CRT’s new draconian demands to travel a minimum distance per year, boaters are being forced to inhabit places that are thoroughly lacking in facilities.
Overall there is a general lack of facilities at a time when there are more boaters, who are paying more money to CRT and seeing no response to demand in return.”
National Bargee Travellers Association - London Branch 