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At the budget in March, the Chancellor of the Exchequer agreed that boaters can continue to use red diesel with the customary declarations on tax split. The Treasury held a consultation at the end of 2020, and NABO responded as we reported in the October NN. We are delighted that the Treasury have listened to us. NABO has been campaigning on this for more than 20 years! Our persistence has paid off at last.NABO Home
The debate over the eco-toilet rolls on
- says enthusiast Helen Hutt.
Let me firstly declare, I’m a fan of eco-toilets. As a continuous cruiser, I bought one in 2009. Every two months or so, I emptied my poo pot into a 10-litre paint tub with a tight-fitting lid until I could dispose of the contents, using a network of amenable farmers’ muck heaps and friends with garden compost bins. Never, ever, would I have considered ‘bagging and binning’ it!
There weren’t many of us back then and, indeed, we were considered a bit strange. But the idea caught on and at some point, I think around 2017, someone asked CRT how they could dispose of their solid waste. CRT rightly advised it could be bagged and binned – and unfortunately that resulted in a surge of interest from boaters who had previously thought disposal was an insurmountable issue. You know how the story has unfolded from there!
NABO supports NBTA seeking to fund legal advice
NABO is supporting the National Bargee Travellers Association in its’ crowdfunding appeal to raise funds for obtaining a Legal Opinion regarding the proposed changes to the CRT Boat Licence Terms and Conditions. This appeal is now open for donations:
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/protect-boats-homes/
Mike Rodd
CRT’s London strategy – NABO’s response
In this paper, NABO is responding to CRT’s recent consultation and Zoom meetings, seeking suggestions from boaters to further address congestion, principally in the London area.
For several years, CRT sought views via the Boater Relationship Group and subsequently, when this collapsed, it facilitated meetings that resulted in the publication of its London Strategy document in June 2018. This document outlined the actions that CRT would take to address congestion in London.
We are concerned that CRT is seeking to repeat this exercise without first implementing a significant number of the promised outcomes. Surely, after all the effort that went into the 2018 strategy document, it would make sense to implement it in full and then carry out a review of where the strategy had worked or failed, before seeking to repeat the exercise. By CRT’s own figures, the numbers of boats have not risen substantially since the strategy was published. The effects of the current pandemic have seen boats spread out further and the longer-term implications are as yet unclear.
East Midlands rep report: March 21
Peter Braley reports: On Thursday 25th March I attended via zoom the East Midlands Online Boaters Conference, hosted by CRT. This is the first of these online conferences I have attended and on the whole I found it interesting and quite informative. There is supposed to be a summary and minutes of the meeting being sent out to all attendees but as yet I have not received anything so the following is from memory and a few scribbled notes.