The original reason this website was set up, the campaign by British Waterways to remove all liveaboard boaters from the Kennet and Avon who have no permanent mooring. The so-called continuous cruisers.
In an email exchange with a boater, Sally Ash said recently that “I honestly don’t know what I’ve done to generate such CC militancy and become such a hate figure!!” The boater had sent a complaint headed “Continuous Hassle” to one of the local CRT offices about the treatment of continuous cruisers. He was surprised to find Ms Ash responding from Head Office.
CRT’s plans for the consultation on the K and A Local Mooring Strategy have changed again. A sub-group of the Local Waterway Partnership (formerly the Partnership Board) will review the mooring strategy and will decide what consultation is required. CRT claims this sub-group will be “independent”. At the final meeting of the Local Mooring Strategy Steering Group in October 2011 it was agreed that the Local Waterway Partnership would review the mooring strategy. BW then unilaterally disbanded the Local Mooring Strategy Steering Group before its work was complete. However, at that point BW still intended to carry out a full public consultation.
Between September and December this year a team of trained Gypsy, Traveller, Boater and Showmen interviewers will be carrying out a study of the health needs of members of their communities living in the Bath and North East Somerset and North Somerset areas. The survey aims to interview 50 Boaters. If you are interested in taking part please contact one of the people listed at the end of this article. Three Boaters will be trained to act as interviewers.
CRT Chief Executive Robin Evans has responded negatively to the boaters’ complaint which we published below about the content of Trustees’ briefing TT06. He has declined to end the use of the term “continuous moorers” and “CMs” and has failed to address most of the issues in the complaint. We publish his reply here:
An enforcement officer’s project that consisted of intensive enforcement action against a selected group of liveaboards without home moorings provides more information about CRT/BW’s enforcement strategy. The “Final Report into non-compliance of British Waterways Continuous Cruiser regulations on the South Oxford Canal” shows that CRT/BW is sending enforcement letters to boaters that are designed to pressure them to travel longer distances, without telling them what distance is considered acceptable to avoid enforcement action.
The CRT Trustees decided recently that Nigel Johnson, the Legal and Corporate Services Director, will retire in 2014 because “We have decided that in the longer term the Trust does not require the expertise of a full time Legal Director”. His post will not be replaced. We have also learnt that Head of Boating Sally Ash has had responsibility for moorings shifted away from her, with her team being shrunk to cover policy on boating and mooring only.
The K&A Boaters’ Action Group will meet next on Monday 13th August at 7.30pm in Bath. If you have time to do a bit of work over the next few months (or longer) defending our rights as liveaboards; doing constructive things like towpath tidies; engaging in dialogue with CRT/BW, etc, then we would like you to be in the group.
Liveaboard boater Simon Greer has started an online petition for security for towpath boat dwellers. You can sign the petition here:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/447/522/923/security-for-towpath-boat-dwellers/