Posts Tagged ‘patrol notices’

BW target to seize 100 boats a year

Monday, May 7th, 2012

Documents provided in response to a Freedom of Information request show that in 2010-2011 BW had a target of seizing 100 “non compliant” boats per year. Monthly reports to management by the BW Enforcement Team in April, May, June, August and October 2010 also show that BW under-estimated the cost of seizing boats, which was around 3,700 per boat, mainly to pay lifting contractors, and as a result was likely to miss its target and only seize 75 in the year to March 2011, despite recouping some of the costs by selling seized boats.

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Three new pages for our web site

Monday, March 12th, 2012

Kennet and Avon Boating Community has added three new pages to the web site –  Report BW Abuse, K&A Nature Watch and Useful Contacts.

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What to do if you get enforcement letters from BW such as a CC1 or Pre-CC1

Monday, November 21st, 2011

A number of boaters have been served with enforcement letters in the last few months. This has mainly been on stretches of the canal above Devizes. Here is some advice about how to respond to them that we hope will be helpful. You can also download this briefing below as a 4-page leaflet.

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Staff picket BW AGM over Directors’ bonuses while boaters question new charity trustees

Saturday, October 29th, 2011

BW directors and members of the public attending the BW AGM on 13 October were greeted by a group of BW employees condemning the “already overpaid directors” £15,000 inflation-busting bonuses as a disgrace while employees pay was not increased. The staff handed out a leaflet asking “are these the people you want to run your charity in future?”.

Graphic designer Simon Greer's take on the new logo

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Do you need a lawyer?

Sunday, March 6th, 2011

Travellers Advice Team (TAT) has represented a number of boaters recently and is building up some expertise in this area of law. TAT a team of solicitors that provides legal advice to Gypsies and Travellers.

TAT provides a Telephone Advice Line for Travellers

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The Continuous Cruising Myth

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

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 legal action mostly concerns licence evasion

Monday, November 29th, 2010

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.

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Pete’s Adventure

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

No, not ‘Five Go Mad In Dorset’, but we have received the following communication…

It’s official: Bath Narrow Boats in collusion with BWB!

BWB seized Indian Pete’s lovely boat Ayuppa. He was taking it to the river to be removed on the river slipway as BWB had requested. He left it overnight before the Deep Lock. Next morning it had gone. There was no notification from BWB what had had happened. He found it moored in Bath Narrow Boats. When he asked for it back an employee (who claimed to own the company) said that BWB had seized the boat. The employee threatened to ‘punch his lights out and call the police if he didn’t leave the premises’.

Later that night Indian Pete recovered his boat without touching Narrow Boats property in any way. Again there was no notification on the boat from BWB.

On Monday 16 Aug a community patrol officer was snooping around Ayuppa and later a BWB canoeist was spotted followed by BWB patrol officers taking numbers. So now they’ve stolen it back.

Pete has now informed a solicitor so watch this space and…….

Naughty Bath Narrow Boats! We don’t need them but they need us!

The “Continuous Cruising Procedure” and CC3 letters

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

A boater recently made a Freedom of Information request about the number of boats BW had either taken to court or removed following a CC3 letter. The CC3 is the letter which terminates the boat licence in what BW like to call the “Continuous cruising procedure”. The boater asked the following questions

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Using the CRT/ BW complaints process

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

Some ideas and thoughts about using the CRT/ BW complaints process based on 20 years working in housing and the same length of time living with BW and now CRT.

It is also important to understand what the complaints process may not reach.

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