An article in the August 2010 Waterways World quotes one of the BW Directors, Simon Salem, who said that in the past two years BW has more or less eliminated licence evasion and the task for BW enforcement now is to eliminate overstaying “within two years”.
Unfortunately Simon’s statement is contradicted by Sally “Foot in Mouth” Ash, who works in his department at BW HQ. In an email exchange with the representative of a boating organisation, following the meeting to discuss the results of the recent consultations on moorings policy and local mooring strategies (see BW to revive roving mooring permit idea, http://kanda.boatingcommunity.org.uk/wordpress/?p=904 ) Ms Ash said:
“I am disappointed that some of you still seem to think that it would be a simple matter for BW to ‘simply’ do more effective enforcement. The 1995 act does not contain a nice clear-cut ‘suite of rules’. We acknowledge that there are shortcomings in our current processes for enforcement of mooring rules and within our current business plan, we have an objective of improving these so that customers will begin to see an improvement – just as they did with licence enforcement two years ago. Such work is neither simple not costless and is not therefore the ‘silver bullet’ that appears to be the perception. This is why we need to supplement it with local strategies and a re-think of mooring rules”.
She was responding to the representative who said: “I am somewhat surprised no one else has remarked on the absence of a note to the effect that there was unanimous (or near unanimous) agreement that if BW applied the suite of rules granted them by the 1995 act to control the use and abuse of casual moorings the need for a local mooring strategy would be reduced if not completely eliminated. Given it was reported that this sentiment was a common feature in the responses to the consultation it seems to me it would be disingenuous not to include such a statement. “
Tags: 14 day rule, British Waterways, enforcement team, Moorings Consultation, Sally Ash