CRT’s consultation on future boat licence pricing proposes to impose higher fees for boats without a home mooring. Have you filled in the consultation survey yet? Please oppose this attack on our community by rejecting it in the questionnaire! The deadline is 4pm on Thursday 6th April 2023. You have only 9 days left to respond!
A boat licence allows all licence holders the same level of access to towpath moorings, facilities and use of navigation structures such as locks, tunnels and lift bridges. There are no towpath stretches, facilities or waterways only for the use of boaters without a home mooring.
You should have received an email with the link to complete the consultation questionnaire online. It is possible to complete the questionnaire by phone. You can contact CRT to do this on 0303 040 4040.
When responding to the consultation please pick the following option at Question 9:
Retaining the current licence fee structure based on the length of the boat and the current surcharge based on boat width. An increase would be applied evenly to all licences at a rate above annual inflation (CPI) each year for a period of ten years (from 2023 – 2032).
This question is repeated several times but the above option is always the last one on the page. This is the question that proposes raising fees for boats without a home mooring and widebeams, and also proposes moving to charging fees by total boat area in square metres rather than length with a width surcharge.
When answering questions 11 to 13, please say that increasing the licence fees for boats without a home mooring and widebeams is “Much less reasonable”.
There is what looks like unlimited space to explain the reasons for your answers in other questions. So you have plenty of opportunity to challenge the spurious reasons that CRT gives for increasing fees for boats without a home mooring and widebeams. Such as:
- It was CRT that changed its enforcement policy against boats without a home mooring in 2014-15 resulting in increased costs of enforcement and of supporting boaters without a home mooring
- It is CRT’s legal duty under the Equality Act that requires it to support boaters, rather than it being the boaters’ fault
- Hire boats and lack of maintenance do the most damage to the network
- The lack of use of the waterways during the Covid lockdowns resulted in siltation and equipment failure so boats constantly moving around is a benefit to CRT
- For CRT to try to recoup expenditure on making reservoirs safe by increasing our licence fees is blatantly unfair given that we are not responsible for the neglect and failure of Toddbrook Reservoir or for the Reservoirs Act
- Challenging the proposal that licence fees have to rise at all over 10 years, given that over the past year we have already seen two inflation increases totalling about 10%
- Challenging the proposal that licence fees have to rise over such a long period instead of a smaller one-off increase
- Challenging the basis of the consultation because CRT has not provided any evidence or figures to support its proposals or its allegations about boats without a home mooring
Tags: boat licence fees, consultation, continuous cruising, cost of living, inflation, liveaboards, Waterways Act 1995, widebeams