Sleepwalking into Trouble?

There was a (very short) CRT consultation in July on changing the licensing system for charity and community boats, which would result in them being charged for a standard leisure boat licence rather than a commercial licence, less a 60% discount. Fair enough, you might say: simplify the licensing system as much as possible; but the knock-on effects on the charities could be very serious. And as two charities point out in their responses, included in this issue, there are other changes proposed, including a ban on ‘commercial’ revenue-generating activity on CRT land and possible changes to moorings and service provisions for these organisations. This is already being seen by some as the ‘big’ charity that has all the power trying to take money away from smaller charities that do not. Regardless of the merits of CRT’s intentions, is its public relations department sleep-walking? Has it not considered what the public perception of the proposals might be when they become more generally known? Newspaper headlines of small boat-owning charities being forced to close because of CRT would be a disaster for the Trust.

In other articles in this issue, Mark Tizard has data on mooring uptake at the ‘honey pot’ site of Stoke Bruerne, which show that the new mooring regulations have had little effect on the availability of visitor moorings there. It seems that word has got round that better enforcement means overstayers no longer overstay, so maybe it would have been better to have introduced better enforcement first to see if it worked before all these ‘no-return’ rules and so on, which (as I said in the last issue) I still believe should be rescinded as soon as possible. On the subject of the last editorial, Brian and Susan Chadwick point out in their letter in this issue that I should have referred to ‘continuous moorers’ not continuous cruisers – a point I gladly accept. Mooring issues and developments were also discussed at the last meeting between NABO’s Mike Rodd and Mark Tizard and CRT and there is a report on the outcome.

I like to give credit where it is due, and I have included a report from Ian Lane, CRT’s West Midlands Principal Waterway Engineer, on the difficult repairs needed to a lock on the Wolverhampton flight following vandalism – all done within 52 days. Mike Rodd recently attended an excellent presentation by Adam Comerford, CRT’s Group Hydrology Manager, who has kindly agreed to speak at NABO’s AGM in November (put the date in your diary now – November 16^th at Wolverhampton Boat Club). Finally, a recent sinking on the Huddersfield Canal prompted me to collect a number of diverse safety-related articles together in this issue. NABO now has a new promotional leaflet, so if you would like copies to hand out to fellow boaters, please get in touch with the Secretary, Richard Carpenter.

Peter Fellows