An enforcement officer on the Grand Union Canal recently emailed a boater without a home mooring telling them how far they should travel in order to comply with s.17 3 c ii of the 1995 British Waterways Act. He said “… if your craft is seen to be travelling in excess of 17km, moving from place to place every 14 days (unless local restrictions apply) turning around to genuinely cruise in the opposite direction there should be no issues”.
CRT appears determined to make liveaboard boaters homeless by denying those who have been subjected to enforcement the opportunity to comply by taking a winter mooring.
CRT is currently recruiting seven new staff whose main purpose will be to persuade boat dwellers without home moorings to accept “new policies”; making sure that CRT’s “messages are accurately understood by social and print media as well as all those affected by changes ” and “helping to develop understanding of the legal framework within which we exercise our responsibilities as navigation authority”. Seven posts have been advertised; these are three Community Participation Managers and three Towpath Mooring Control Managers for London, the South and the North, plus an Administrator. The total cost is around £500,000.
Councillor Fleur de Rhé-Philipe, Chair of the Kennet and Avon Local Waterway Partnership, resigned this week. Tamsin Phipps, who represents canoeists on the Partnership, is now acting as the temporary Chair. The Partnership is about to release its review of the K&A local mooring strategy proposals.
The recent Memorandum of Understanding between CRT and the Residential Boat Owners Association (RBOA) is a further indication of CRT’s efforts to divide boating organisations and reward those that support its policies while seeking to misrepresent and exclude those that challenge it. CRT has signed memoranda of understanding with the Inland Waterways Association (IWA) and the RBOA to date.
The K&A Local Waterways Partnership Moorings Sub-Group has held two meetings so far, on 26th October and 19th November. It is due to carry out a final review of the proposed mooring plan before putting it out to consultation to the organisations and communities represented in the Sub-Group.