Happy New Year boaters

It may be a bit late but I'm going to suggest that CRT needs to make a New Years resolution: Be nicer to boaters. (Now stop laughing in the back!) Seriously, how are things going to be between boaters and CRT in 2018?

We wait with baited breathe CRT's decisions following the national Boat Licencing consultation. For me at least the whole exercise says a lot: CRT have spent tens of thousands of pounds fiddling around with talk about changing something which it appears to most of us wasn't broken in the first place. In so doing they have of course re-opened a can of worms that they have looked into so many times before. It seems either that they have forgotten from the last time that all that is in the can is worms, or maybe they are just opening it again on purpose?

If nothing else what we have seen from all the om-line comment on the consultation is pretty much any change CRT choose to make is going to make someone unhappy. Why oh why did they go there in the first case?

Of course the favourite theory is they want to have yet another go at increasing licence charges for continuous cruisers despite the fact that the usual suspects like NABO and NBTA keep pointing out that this would most likely be ultra vires.

So why do CRT persist in this repeated self flagellation exercise?

Quiet before the storm 2017

Still here but not had a lot to say. Given the failure to communicate, anyone would think I was undertaking a licence consultation!

Like many I await the next stage of CRT's boat licence consultation exercise with a mixture of suspicion and resignation. It seems not even CRT's Navigation Advisory Committee are sure what is coming! (See answer to q3 in this FOI request). As indicated in the last post no-one seems quite sure what is wrong or why CRT are doing this exercise. NBTA has written an excoriating critique of the process so far which makes for good sport! And no-one really believes that CRT are going to spend all that time and effort for a "revenue neutral" review when they are struggling for funds.

True to form CRT have also imposed a major change to licence structure, while the consultation is going on; They have introduced a new licence for private renting boats with a particularly tight restriction on having a residential mooring, all apparently with no consultation. Again true to form they have had a reasonable idea and then executed it with all the subtlety of a Donald Trump tweet!

CRT's admits that its (latest!) Boat Licencing Consultation is based on hearsay

Many of us have said over the years that it is BW, and now CRT, policy to create problems where none exist.

I was therefore particularly struck by a Facebook thread from a boater with a long term mooring who was uncertain about the terms and conditions on which they could take their boat out cruising and was worried about getting ticketed by a patrol officer or even getting a restricted licence. Other postings in that thread quickly clarified things but it says a lot about how confused matters are getting when this sort of thing comes up, when a boating customer is so baffled by the bullshit that they are afraid to take their boat out.

I suppose someone in CRT thinks this is a good thing; Those bloody boaters, taking their boat out on the canal and sailing them up and down! Such a nuisance!

Anyway just to confuse thing a little more, as most people are aware, CRT are undertaking yet another licencing review and one has the feeling that this also fits into the 'lets look like we are doing something' modus operandi.

Rumours of common sense being applied to Canal and River Trust mooring policy may have been premature

I was clearly being far too optimistic when I suggested an outbreak of common sense at CRT when it came to visitor moorings policy. As usual, although the intentions were doubtless genuine, the execution was....

CRT attempted another consultation on restricting visitor mooring times in the South East region earlier this year, but a few days after they started, they admitted that they had provided incorrect data for one of the sites so they withdrew that part of the consultation. In their own words:

"...the current mooring stay time information for Batchworth provided in the visitor mooring report to the sub group in November, and subsequently transferred into the consultation was incorrect. This error was highlighted to me today, so I have taken action to withdrawal the Batchworth proposal from the consultation information on the web page replacing it with a correction and apology..."

After that false start Mark Tizzard of NABO pointed out a slightly more serious flaw in the methodology when it came to the data used to justify the consultation as a whole:

It would appear that the volunteers who did the boat logging were not asked to record whether there was any available mooring space so it is not clear whether over the suggested period there was a consistent shortage of available mooring space or not.

So basically the consultation was not based on any evidence of the lack of availability of space, because CRT did not get its  foot soldiers to check for that

(I suppose trying to introduce restrictions with the wrong evidence is a step forward from trying to do it with no evidence whatsoever?)

Shock news - It's official: Boaters are Customers!

Last week CRT announced the latest customer survey for boat owners. The press release I saw was headed, 'Revamped Boat Owners' views survey has customer focus'. 

I have only just stopped laughing. One has to wonder what the PR people in CRT do all day to let this one slip through? You mean the previous boaters' surveys weren't customer focused?

Couldn't make it up!

(PS - apparently, strawberry jam contains strawberries - you have been warned!)

An outbreak of common sense in CRT?

Saying something positive about CRT? Well yes. It seems that what many have said about the futility of tinkering with visitor mooring durations, so beloved of Sally Ash and some others, if not to stop, will at least now only be attempted on a rational basis. Last week CRT announced its Short Term Mooring Framework.

The policy sets out detailed rational criteria that must be considered before imposing changes on visitor mooring durations. It acknowledges a clear distinction between formal visitor moorings and casual mooring and sets some basic standards of maintenance for visitor moorings. The only notable absence is anything about dredging and depth of water. Most importantly it sets out a national framework. It seems that someone has realised the futility of different things going on in different regions, confusing boaters and frontline staff alike!

The policy also included what is supposed to be a comprehensive consultation framework and makes piloting future changes all but mandatory.

All quiet?

Mid August is usually a lull in the storm of CRT issues and one the whole much the same with me. If this year is true to form around about the beginning of September a load of things will kick off again.

Me; had a short dialogue with Richard Parry about the disappointing experience as a long term mooring customer. Ironically a few days after that conversation, CRT contractors turned up as planned to change our Service bollards over. A few hours in, one of my neighbours knocked on the boat to alert me to the fact that the new bollards did not have pairs of taps on them.

It seems CRT have unilaterally decided that having had a tap per berth for the last fifteen years or so we now have to go over to sharing. So much to being a valued customer!

Still fixing mooring prices?

I've highlighted for several years the moorings at Engineers Wharf in West London, and more importantly, given CRT's inability to keep the moorings fully let, the apparently inflated reserve prices that had been maintained, one suspects to help justify keeping prices up for other moorers locally.

It is more than three years since I first highlighted this, and for much longer than that, there have been persistent vacant berths (and lost income) at Engineers Wharf.  (Link to 83 no. closed vacancies/adverts and prices at Engineers Wharf since 2010! )

Well as of today there are no less than seven berths advertised as Buy It Now vacancies and the price for a 70' berth has been set at £5880 (up from £5292 as the reserve this time last year.)

Curious too that in the interim similar berths were the offered only three months ago with a reserve of £4998? So if you want, you can buy it now for £900 more than the reserve price when it was last auctioned - Any takers?!

What the heck is going on here!?

It seems that despite the good intentions set out  in the outcomes of the Moorings Sales Consultation, CRT are still in this case setting prices at pretty much at random. If anyone can make sense of these price variations, do let me know!

And of course it remains to be seen if the current vacancies will let. 

The latest smoke-screen

The consensus seems to be that NABO's hard hitting stance against the CRT licence changes as set out in their open letter has had some effect. CRT have dropped some of the more extreme and ridiculous proposals. (My favourite silly idea was the draft clause which taken at face value would have meant you could only change home mooring on the day of your licence renewal.)

It also seems that someone has re-read the Data Protection Act and realised that handing out personal details of licence holders to anyone who asked was probably not such a bright idea after all!

Nonetheless some dubious terms and conditions remain. As ever we will see in due course which of these stand up in Court if they ever come to be tested in that way.

Problems ahead

A pretty short one today but just to highlight Mick FitzGibbons' article today on Narrowboatworld. Many of the themes Mick raises chime with my own thinking on this and much as per my previous post on trust between boaters and CRT (or the lack of).

It is interesting that the URL to Mick's piece includes the phrase 'problems ahead' - a sentiment I wholly agree with.

A case study in how to alienate your customers?

Many people's hopes (including mine) that changes in the Canal and River Trust would lead to better relationships with boaters have been dashed by recent events. Reflecting on CRT's recent attempts to take stronger action against Continuous Cruisers who don't move very far, NABO's open letter to CRT sums up the problems pretty well.

It is difficult to understate how big a failure this episode represents. I think I give no secrets away when I say that colleagues in NABO who have come to Council recently were genuinely determined to try to build bridges with CRT. The presence of new blood, in whom I have great confidence, was a major factor in my feeling able to stand down. Again it is no secret when I suggest that they feel they have been well and truly slapped in the face for their recent efforts.

As a former NABO national officer, the narrative in the open letter comes as no surprise: One sits down in one's own time with CRT/BW, tries to give them constructive advice and feedback on how to implement something difficult and sensitive, taking into account your experience and knowledge of boating and they then do something different, omitting key parts of what you thought you'd just agreed. Seems that the change from BW to CRT has not changed that?

Mutton dressed up as lamb

Some of us vainly hoped that Sally Ash's departure might lead to CRT adopting some genuine blue skies thinking about their boating business.

One hope was that CRT might finally abandon the almost annual tinkering ritual when it comes to Boat Licence Terms and Conditions: but apparently not. This time it seems that they are not even bothering with the pretence of doing consultation but are just planning to impose the changes from April come what may (see NABO article, which also links on to a document from CRT on the changes). After due consideration, NABO have described the proposed changes as adopting "an unnecessarily aggressive tone".

Subsequently we also have an old favourite back in the fore with the latest CRT pronouncements on continuous cruising. The nub of this seems to be to formalise a policy of trying to force people to take long term moorings. I suppose at least they are now saying so openly!

Is Canal and River Trust a 'housing authority'?

It is to say the least ironic that many of those presently living on boats owe their 'right' to do so to the same person that many of them (with more than a little good cause) saw as their principle persecutor in recent times! The start of the 'trouble' was one of Sally Ash's first decisions when she was put in charge of boating, to remove the general Licence requirement not to use your boat as a dwelling. That in effect gave blanket permission to all licence holders to live on their boats; Unsurprisingly many have taken up the offer.

When we get into the nitty gritty of residential boating issues, the 'excuse' for in-action frequently wheeled out by BW (and which CRT seem to have adopted), is: 'We are not a housing authority'. The problem is that by waiving one of the byelaws twenty years ago Sally Ash made you so!

It seems to me that many of the subsequent disputes between BW and now CRT and boaters have flowed from that and from Sally's and others' attempts to get that cat back in the bag.

Book Barge row - missing the point?

It's interesting how the media furore around the 'book barge', Word on the Water, has developed. On social media and elsewhere there is much about the 'unfairness' of a higher bidder getting the long term mooring in Paddington. Make of that what you will but given the background to my recent petition to CRT, and the way the allocation of CRT moorings is decided generally, the outcome in this case should come as no big surprise.

Narrowboatworld, never a gentle critic of CRT, acknowledges in its article that the boat has a roving trading permit (clue in the name) and that the current occupation of a berth in Paddington was a temporary arrangement. So it seems inevitable to me that CRT would ask Word on the Water to move on if they didn't make the highest bid.

However more worryingly many of those complaining seem to me to have missed the bigger point. The idea of having a commercial mooring or two in the Paddington area was consulted on with local canal users through the Better Relationships Group (BRG) and CRT have as usual ignored what was said in the consultation process and gone another way.

Petition sent to Canal and River Trust trustees

Just to say thanks to those who have signed the petition so far; As I said to supporters through 38 degrees,  

I am planning to leave the petition open at least until CRT issues its response, so if you have friends or contacts who you think have not signed yet and who would still offer their support please encourage them to do so even though the formal consultation period is over. Any additional pressure we can keep on them to think again in advance of them deciding what to do next must be a good thing.

I have just sent the petition with 442 signatures to CRT with the covering letter reproduced below.

Given what they have said so far and given their general track record when it comes to acting on what boating customers say, I will not hold my breathe about them changing their minds. CRT knows best children.

PS. Spell check just offered the following option for the first time: Cabal and River Trust. I know Google is quite smart at discrening user preferences and learning stuff about you but....!

CRT knows best!

As I have just said on Facebook; I'm smiling wryly at Alan's latest article on NBW;
http://narrowboatworld.com/…/ne…/7431-cart-ignoring-petition

...and of course please sign the petition if you haven't already and think that the option of scrapping the policy of selling public assets to the higest bidder should be on the table.

Don't forget that the consultation ends this weekend. Please also send your thoughts direct to CRT; 'all comments and views to mooring.updates@canalrivertrust.org.uk'.

Sorry to go on, but further proof if needed that CRT Trustees don't really care what boaters think. Same old 'we know best attitude' we experienced with BW. Plus ca change...

The same seems to be happening with the so called London Better Relationships Group. Lots of stuff flying around about having an agenda but a seemingly steadfast refusals, (it has to be said not just from CRT but from other members of the group), to go back to the consultation responses that started all that:

My missive to the BRG earlier this week, by way of illustration. Are you sitting comfortably?

CRT blatantly refuses to reconsider the 'merits' of selling moorings to the highest bidder

As I said to some friends when I saw this, in the words of Brick Top, 'Are you taking the piss?'.

The latest consultation from CRT will let you discuss just about anything you want about their much hated moorings auctions process except whether it should exist at all.

Narrowboatworld has already reported this and columnist Allan Richards has had a go and I have decided to join in with something I rarely do, starting a petition. https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/that-the-trustees-of-the-canal-and-rrver-trust-withdraw-the-current-consultation-on-moorings-sales.

A Sick Joke?

My last post on April 01 yielded a number of reactions which let's be honest was exactly what I intended!

The vast majority of people realised at once  it was an April fool because like me they know that the current CRT set up doesn't really give much of a damn about boating customers. It is noteworthy that so many people found the idea of CRT offering boaters a better deal and addressing long held concerns about facilities and moorings to be unbelievable. The thought that CRT might actually invest money in facilities for boaters as opposed to more and more hare brained enforcement schemes is clearly something many boaters found to be highly unlikely.

A few conspiracy theorists linked my post to the announcement of Sally Ash's retirement. I must say I did not have foreknowledge of that news, because in the past Sally has said she was going to go on and on and on. However the fact a few people thought my post about investment in facilities was linked to Sally's departure speaks volumes.

NABO's posting on Sally's imminent retirement still has me smiling!

RIP Roving Mooring Permits?

I'm not sure how I should react to the news that CRT have backed off issuing Roving Mooring Permits. (The CRT press release is here as a Word .Docx file).

As a former NABO Council member I suppose I should at least be slightly pleased that our scepticism about the legality of the proposal has proved valid.

However I'm more relieved that unsuspecting boaters are now not going to be duped into parting with money for what I have personally highlighted as a highly dubious if not outright corrupt proposal.

Should you bother volunteering with Canal and River Trust?

The whole question of volunteering with CRT is a difficult one for me, and I suspect for many others. What I do know is that CRT urgently have to up their game on this front by several orders of magnitude.

There is no doubt that CRT does not have the resources to maintain the waterways as a whole and are constantly fire fighting. Many jobs especially when it comes to litter and grounds maintenance, that in the past were done by staff or contractors, now only happen when volunteers are available. CRT realise this but are they going about engaging with volunteers effectively? Some examples of my personal frustrations: