Bath Council stops moorings for no reason

[sarabande]

This seems highly anti-boat.

Council votes to remove riverbank moorings

Does anyone local know of reasons why the Council is picking on NBs and cruisers ?

 

[Stemar]

At a cabinet meeting on Thursday, boater Rebecca Sarll accused the council of taking residents' claims "at face value with zero data to back them up".
Neighbourhood Watch coordinator Elisabeth Evans said all residents wanted was to "protect this area for the greater community to enjoy".
She said terminating the moorings was "imperative".

Reading between the lines, probably a few boat owners - I'm going to guess of the less beautiful boats - have been inconsiderate and a few influential council tax payers are going all NIMBY. Since influential NIMBYs cause councils more grief than transient boat owners, it's only going to end one way.

 

[TernVI]

The canal system around Bath is filling up with 'new age traveller' types on boats.
Parts of it are really quite squalid.
It's no surprise that people don't want many of these boat dwellers on their doorstep, any more than you or I would want road going 'travellers' camped on our street.
A mate of mine used to live on a barge 20 years ago, it was fine then, because there were very few people doing that.
It's grown out of hand.

 

[Keith 66]

^^^^^^ This, As more people fall off the housing ladder a houseboat or narrowboat will appeal to many as a cheap way of getting a home, then they get a continuous cruising licence & take the piss by staying put. Result is waterways clogged with poor standard boats & creeks on the coast too.
Its as much a social problem as anything else.

 

[Tamar]

I noticed this as far back as 2009 when we borrowed a barge for a week on the river Lee and stort. Here and there a boat moored up, usually covered with tarps and bikes with little gardens ashore usually with some hippie type people sitting around. I guess people have always lived on rivers, it's just more regulations now.

 

[Concerto]

There seems to be a housing problem in Bristol and Bath. I was visiting the area in February and was surprised by the many caravans parked on wide residential roads in Bristol and being used to live in. These were all nearing the end of their life caravans and I certainly would not welcomed them near my home if I lived nearby. I expect the same is happening in Bath on the canal. The canal rules do seem be ignored with continuous cruising licences being used, rather than residential licences, and then abusing the berthing limits. I pity genuine canal boat users who cannot get a berth in a visitors area due to those over staying permanently.

 

[oldmanofthehills]

It is not possible to easily get continous moorings, and the costs are high. Sod the NIMBYs of Bath, I home their houses are repossessed and they get thrown on the scrap heap and see how it feels. People have always lived on the canals and rivers and the river access right in UK are dreadful compared with say Germany.

I would soon have have half those "hippie" boaters as neighbours than most of the snotty yuppies of Bath

 

[steve yates]

House prices in bath and bristol and lack of social housing will be the root cause.

 

[owen]

I spoke to a cyclist on the Bath canal towpath. He was going to visit his son who had bought small boat and moored it on the canal(legitimately) for the duration of his uni course. He was enjoying the life on the water and saving a fortune on living costs

 

[JumbleDuck]

It is not possible to easily get continous moorings, and the costs are high. Sod the NIMBYs of Bath, I home their houses are repossessed and they get thrown on the scrap heap and see how it feels.

Are they also squatters who have behaved so antisocially that the neighbours are desperate to be rid of them?

 

[ryanroberts]

At a cabinet meeting on Thursday, boater Rebecca Sarll accused the council of taking residents' claims "at face value with zero data to back them up".
Neighbourhood Watch coordinator Elisabeth Evans said all residents wanted was to "protect this area for the greater community to enjoy".
She said terminating the moorings was "imperative".

Reading between the lines, probably a few boat owners - I'm going to guess of the less beautiful boats - have been inconsiderate and a few influential council tax payers are going all NIMBY. Since influential NIMBYs cause councils more grief than transient boat owners, it's only going to end one way.

Yep it's going to be some idiot running a frame generator 24/7 while hitting bongs in the cabin. There is no continuous cruising licence, but you have to move regularly. This is flouted terribly, particularly in certain regions - the western end of the K&A being one of them. The most antisocial boaters have little or no fear of enforcement by CRT, so you tend to get these conflicts between landlubbers and scruff boats that ruins things for anyone with good intentions. One of the reasons why I moved from canal life is that this will keep happening all over the country and there's no real way to get these moorings back.


Even in places where the boats are generally well behaved this is happening. One guy in macclesfield sent so much green ink to the authorities that they moved a waterpoint at great expense, redevelopment projects in urban areas usually end up specifically excluding boats. Either by removing mooring or introducing swing / lift bridges that will never move - Ancoats in Manchester is a fun example of this, they installed a lift bridge but with no intention of ever putting electronics in it

 

[Hermit]

This seems highly anti-boat.

Council votes to remove riverbank moorings

Does anyone local know of reasons why the Council is picking on NBs and cruisers ?

I was a member of Bristol Avon Sailing Club. which is the dinghy club in the picture. The narrowboats were being moored 2 and 3 deep in some places and were accompanied by loats of parking of vans and campervans on the narrow riverbank road as well as BBQ/cooking firess etc. The 14 day limt was regularly being broken with no enforcement. There is no sewage pump-out facilty (so you can imagine what was happening).

Additionally, many years back, when the road was re-inforced and river bank re-built is was designed (not sure how) for vegitation and rock to support it - and is now only sufficient for occasional mooring apparently.

There were, of course, livaboards who were perfectly reasonable but the likes of those that parked their caravans next to thier boats and removed the wheels so it couldn't be towed away tended to cause all the problems.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Cambridge has faced similar problems for many years, with a minority who spoilt thing for the law-abiding and decent majority. This ended up with the several authorities (at least three) concerned getting together and severely restricting the number of moorings available. Indeed it wasn't until the situation got seriously bad that the several authorities came together to act.