Time to cut the grass?
Last year I wrote a long article about towpath mowing (‘One man went to mow’, Issue 4, July 2020). I write now with an update. CRT and the Navigation Advisory Group (NAG) have worked on the mowing regimes over the last 12 months to improve the mapping on the towpath maps. These are the instructions to Fountains on what to cut and where. The need is to accurately record the knowledge of where to cut at:
The national CRT team has carried out a desk review of these points and updated the mowing maps. Boaters from the NAG have assisted with this. The new maps are now available on the CRT website. Please have a look at the mowing as you are cruising and provide feedback to CRT via the web portal. Please provide locations. General comments are useless.
Anne Husar finds key issues not consulted on, which could negatively impact boaters.
As many of you will be aware, there has recently been yet another revision of CRT’s Terms and Conditions (T&C’s) for private boaters. This latest publication follows their admission of ‘errors’ in previous drafts which has now led to two of the more contentious conditions being removed. There are now, we think, three differing versions of this document in circulation with the potential to cause much confusion. For our purposes here we are referring to the document referenced by CRT as 15.6.21 v.2.
As many of you are also aware, NABO Council has been carefully scrutinising these developments and, as a result of NABO’s comments, significant changes were made to the readability of the Privacy policy and the corrected GDPR document. It has been reworded to make it easier to understand but there remain some parts that could be improved. Certainly many of the typos and much random use of capital letters throughout the T&Cs document that made it such an annoying read were quickly removed when we pointed out what a shoddy publication they had produced. So, where are we now?
We feel that there remain four key issues some of which were not consulted on and which could impact negatively on boaters.
In mid-2020, CRT commenced a consultation on the private boat licence terms and conditions. They did not invite comment on the whole document, but limited the consultation to nine items of change.
NABO made three submissions: on the consultation; on the privacy policy and a third on the readability of the terms and privacy documents. The consultation closed in December 2020. We chased CRT on several occasions for responses to our submissions. CRT did not ask us for other assistance on revisions to the wording.
On 24th May 2021, CRT announced the publication of the results of the consultation. This comprised a press release, a close out commentary on the consultation and a first version of the 2021 terms document. CRT said: ‘The consultation received widespread support, with 78% of respondents in agreement across all nine proposals, ranging from 63% to 88% for individual proposals. The consultation was completed by over 3,300 individuals, around 10% of our boat licence holders. The changes will come into effect from 1 June 2021 and will be applied to renewals and new licences from that date.’
On 27th May 2021 NABO Council met to review the documents and consider our immediate responses.
On 28th May, we received a response letter from CRT covering the privacy policy issues. This successfully resolves a number of issues about the CRT documents, with a commitment to modify them. On the same day, CRT published the revised documents and some but not all licence holders have received emails. The changes could not be identified and were not reported.
Mike Rodd compares and contrasts the BSS with navigation authorities.
I must be terribly naïve! In my simple mind, if I were applying to the Government to continue/extend a multimillion ongoing annual grant, I would want my most influential and committed customers to be supporting my application and giving it as much positive publicity as possible. Not so, CRT or EA, it appears.
As will be known from previous editions of NABO News, both CRT and EA will be applying for further government funding in the next five or six years. In both cases, however, they seem to be hell-bent on ignoring the views of most of the boater representative organisations.
The present situation regarding CRT’s current revisions to the Terms and Conditions for boat licences is a classic case. Yes, there was a public consultation – well, sort of, as long as you had good internet access (which of course many boaters don’t, denying them the chance to comment – but hey, they are only boaters, so why worry?).
Read more: Has any notice been taken of us? Of course not...
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