DEFRA and BW have announced a second consultation on certain aspects of the order which will transfer BW to charity status. This will take place between 12th September and 24th October. In particular the consultation covers whether the new waterways charity should be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Please respond to the consultation – there have been a lot of them recently but this is also important!
By Simon Robbins
That Continuous Cruisers are the main culprits when it comes to overstaying on visitors moorings is a myth that BW continue to perpetuate in order to justify differential charges and other targeting of Continuous Cruisers.
Many Boaters in the boating forums rail about Continuous Cruisers in this way too. I was therefore very relieved when a glimmer of reality pierced through the prejudice and outright bigotry one too often reads in such forums when one contributor bothered asking the question, “what’s the evidence”?
The answer is, NONE! Beyond that, when challenged, the evidence BW have supplied to date, seems to prove that very point!
As I said in my posting in the Canalworld string “Freeloaders?”
http://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=35526
NABO did a Freedom Of Information request on this a few years back. We wanted to test the assertion that CC’r’s are more guilty on overstaying than those with moorings. We asked BW about numbers of patrol notices issued and then asked them to look at the proportion of those notices that were issued against boats that had home moorings versus those that were Continuous Cruisers. The maths showed clearly that boats that had registered with BW as having home moorings we more likely per capita to attract overstay notices than CC’rs.
BW have never attempted to contradict our findings which were sent to them with an invite to reply if they dis-agreed or could show we had missed something. Another bit of NABO correspondence they never replied to!
Well catching up with old e-mails this morning, I came across a more recent set of evidence which seem to further confirm that BW’s rhetoric on Continuous Cruisers is just that, and does not stand up, even on with their own figures.
The Western end of the Kennet and Avon seems to be the focus for BW’s efforts at the moment and a boater’s Freedom of Information Request in Autumn 2010 again put paid to the false prospectus that BW are running.
BW says , ‘The number of boats on the Kennet and Avon Canal which have legal action pending – 152’.
When one comes to BW’s categorisation of the individual reasons we are told:
Licensing Enforcement – 119;
Mooring Enforcement – 15;
Overstay Enforcement – 7;
Continuous Cruising Enforcement – 8
Other – 3
If eight of the cases are classed as CC’rs does that mean the seven listed as Overstayers have home moorings? If so then again we see that boats with home moorings are as much of a problem a CC’rs.
Even if in slightly self-contradictory fashion, one assumed the seven ‘Overstayers’ were all CC’rs too, does the fuss and drama BW are making over the evils of continuous cruisers seem proportionate to the fact that BW can only show, on their own numbers, most generously interpreted, fifteen serious breaches of the ‘rules’ worthy of legal action on the K+A?
(The next question, one that was not asked but one wonders; how many of these fifteen cases are solid enough for Court proceedings to have been issued?)
The BW numbers seem to me to show pretty clearly that most Continuous Cruisers based on the Kennet and Avon are doing what they should be and that BW’s rhetoric cannot be about enforcement issues. Rather it seems to be an excuse to introduce differential charges and other sanction against Continuous Cruisers based on a rhetoric of prejudice which even BW’s own facts and figures do not support.
BW are basing a whole campaign of activities on a false premise. No wonder BW are in a mess when idiocy like this is allowed to prevail, apparently with the endorsement of the BW Board and Directors.
This article first appeared on Simon’s blog Liveaboard Forum:
http://liveaboard-forum.blogspot.com/2011/01/continuous-cruising-myth.htm
Liveaboard Forum Home Page:
http://liveaboard-forum.blogspot.com/
BW appears to be going ahead with local mooring strategies in other areas which it defines as ‘hotspots’ before the pilot local mooring strategy on the Kennet and Avon Canal has even been drawn up and implemented. As far as we know, these areas are the Lee and Stort, Birmingham, the Macclesfield Canal and the Southern Grand Union.
As we have discovered from the consultations and the subsequent local mooring strategy steering group meetings on the Kennet and Avon, local mooring strategies are likely to be targeted at boats without moorings and especially at liveaboard boaters without moorings.
Photo: Bob Naylor KAcanalTIMES.co.uk
A boater recently made this Freedom of Information request to BW and got the answer below which suggests that most of the pending legal action against boaters is about licence evasion rather than overstaying, and that BW may be carrying out unlawful enforcement action against 8 boats without home moorings.
Following our incomplete story, BW and the K and A Trust: After the apology, the answers! (July 2010 posts), we have received the emails between Mark Stephens, K&A Manager, and the Trust, requested using Freedom of Information. These emails include the draft minutes of the User Group meeting on 29 April. They also show Mark talking about the boaters’ towpath tidy, saying how pleased he is that people are volunteering without being asked, but also saying that some control is needed. Mark, if you’re reading this, one of the people organising the clean-up tried many times to talk to you on the phone to ask permission to do this, with no joy. So we went ahead and tidied the towpath anyway.
The emails also show that the main focus of the Trust’s partnership with BW is the use of volunteers to carry out maintenance of the canal. A good reason to get involved methinks. It doesn’t look like the Trust will be involved with enforcement, but we still don’t know what the partnership agreement actually says. At the last request for it, we were told it hadn’t yet been drawn up.
The emails are here. Mark Stephens emails 1 Mark Stephens emails 2 Mark Stephens emails 3 Mark Stephens emails 4 Mark Stephens emails 5 Mark Stephens emails 6
At one of the meetings between boaters, BW and Wiltshire Council Ken Oliver, Wiltshire Council’s Canal Officer, made a comment about the amount of money that Councils pay each year to BW. Wanting to know the amounts and what this money was for I made FOI requests to BW, Wiltshire Council, B&NES and West Berkshire Council, asking for amounts that they had paid to or received from BW in the last five years.
As usual, the figures received from the Councils and from BW don’t match, but judging from the recent totally inaccurate FOI replies from BW I feel it is more likely the Council ones are accurate. The amounts in total come to a massive £552,955 paid to BW over a five-year period.
I have now had a response from BW to my request for an internal review of its refusal to send me minutes of meetings with the K&A Trust. Here it is:
Further to Caroline Killeavy’s correspondence with you I am responding to your request for all documents regarding: …“Please could you send me the minutes or notes of all meetings between British Waterways and the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust which took place between 1 January 2009 and 23 March 2010. Please could you send me copies of all email correspondence and notes of telephone calls and conversations to British Waterways from the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust between 1 January 2009 and 23 March 2010. Please could you send me copies of all email correspondence and notes of telephone calls and conversations to the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust from British Waterways between 1 January 2009 and 23 March 2010. Please could you send me a list of the dates, times, locations and attendees of meetings between British Waterways and the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust between 1 January 2009 and 23 March 2010.”