Enforcement

To the best of my knowledge the EA has not prosecuted anyone who has made clear their intention to plead not guilty. In every single case of a successful prosecution published by the EA in their press releases the defendant has either pleaded guilty or not attended.
Clearly many were guilty because they were certainly on Thames water.
However, The EA clearly does not want to test the adjacent waters issue in court.
What you say may be true but they are , of course, entitled not to proceed with a prosecution if they feel it may not succeed and, indeed, it would be foolish to waste money doing so. Unfortunately genuine and complete transparency is extremely unlikely so we cannot know the truth of the matter.
I suspect the number of residual cases is extremely small and it is between the EA and the defendants to decide on a conclusion. Is that any different to the police not pursing charges because the CPS decide there is no likelihood of a conviction?

One thing is for sure, whatever the rights and wrongs of the legality issue any significant inability or failure to collect fees for whatever reason adds to the problem of underfunding.
 
Last edited:
The cost of enforcement should also be reviewed, by your own admission, it costs more to administer than it brings in.
I am not sure why you think this should be "by my own admission" but I wonder what the level of delinquency would be if there were NO enforcement?

If you detect an unwillingness on my part to engage in this argument it is simply because I see no point in pursuing an issue for which I have no responsibility and over which I have no control. I do however want to continue cruising the river and would like it to be in good order. I would ideally like to continue enjoying lock keeping services as far as that may be possible.
 
…. and still no-one wants to face up to the need to identify significant new sources of funding ……

All and every possible source of income must be considered no matter if in the past it has not been considered worth pursuing.
Feel sure there must be one or two novel ways of raising money from those who have been enjoying the benefits and advantages of the Thames without perhaps being aware that every last gallon of water and inch of the water course is costing somebody somewhere something.
Time to spread the load a little to those who enjoy but do not contribute !.
 
Time to spread the load a little to those who enjoy but do not contribute !.

Needs to be a bit more sophisticated thinking than that. Every tax payer contributes through the government funding of the river, both for leisure and flood control etc. The difficulty arises when one tries to quantify which groups of users enjoy specific benefits and what level of contribution is equitable.

Unfortunately, we seem to have to start with the premise that no-one actually wants to pay and the various factions will fight tooth and nail to try and pay as little as possible.
 
Last edited:
According to Jim Sheads pages:

GO WITH THE FLO Built by Broom 35 in 1999 - Length 10.6 metres (34 feet 9 inches ) - Beam 3.7 metres (12 feet 2 inches ) a Diesel Inboard engine with a power of 135HP. Registered with EA Thames Region number F029812 as a Non Hire Annual. Last registration recorded on 23-May-2013.

So Chris_d is right, that one is a 35...
Actually wrong. Jim Shead's info is a little out of date. The boat is a Broom 39 and although I don't know what engines she has I would expect she's capable of planing, or getting as close to planing as a semi D Broom hull can. I passed her yesterday.

Whatever other merits the Broom hull may claim,it basically creates the sort of wash associated with dumping a couple of tons of brick rubble in the water.

Depends how far you push the levers. Mine has perfectly acceptable wash up to about 5 knots, depending on various factors eg depth of water, wind etc.
 
Actually wrong. Jim Shead's info is a little out of date. The boat is a Broom 39 and although I don't know what engines she has I would expect she's capable of planing, or getting as close to planing as a semi D Broom hull can. I passed her yesterday.



Depends how far you push the levers. Mine has perfectly acceptable wash up to about 5 knots, depending on various factors eg depth of water, wind etc.

So maybe Apollo was not so sloshed then!
 
"Depends how far you push the levers. Mine has perfectly acceptable wash up to about 5 knots, depending on various factors eg depth of water, wind etc."

you are of course absolutely correct,however at 5 1/2 knots :)
 
you are of course absolutely correct,however at 5 1/2 knots :)

P1010106small.jpg


:D
 
I am not sure why you think this should be "by my own admission" but I wonder what the level of delinquency would be if there were NO enforcement?

If you detect an unwillingness on my part to engage in this argument it is simply because I see no point in pursuing an issue for which I have no responsibility and over which I have no control. I do however want to continue cruising the river and would like it to be in good order. I would ideally like to continue enjoying lock keeping services as far as that may be possible.

You said earlier in this thread,

"Sadly, the cost of pursuing delinquents is often far greater than any resulting income"

I am certainly not advocating removing any enforcement, but enforcement must be targeted correctly and be proportionate.

A recent EA survey of registered users asked a question that required the responder to rate satisfaction level of the enforcement. I believe a very high satisfaction level was achieved. If the question had been prefaced by a comment in the form our enforcement operation cost £2,000,000 (uninformed guess) do you think the same level of satisfaction would be achieved?

You state "I see no point in pursuing an issue for which I have no responsibility and over which I have no control." you could say the same about your determination to help find further significant sources of income to replace the public money that is now being severely curtailed. I applaud your efforts in this respect but income is only part of the equation, you probably need a lot more information about the way the current money is spent.

No doubt spending will have to be curtailed as well as new sources of income found but perhaps we could curtail the ongoing cycle of improvements on the Thames that I sometimes think are as much about spending the current budget so that it is not reduced next year. I for one could live without the bank side improvements at Hurley, Chertsey, Shepperton and the paddle and Rymer weir replacements at various locations.
 
You said earlier in this thread,

"Sadly, the cost of pursuing delinquents is often far greater than any resulting income"

I am certainly not advocating removing any enforcement, but enforcement must be targeted correctly and be proportionate.

A recent EA survey of registered users asked a question that required the responder to rate satisfaction level of the enforcement. I believe a very high satisfaction level was achieved. If the question had been prefaced by a comment in the form our enforcement operation cost £2,000,000 (uninformed guess) do you think the same level of satisfaction would be achieved?

You state "I see no point in pursuing an issue for which I have no responsibility and over which I have no control." you could say the same about your determination to help find further significant sources of income to replace the public money that is now being severely curtailed. I applaud your efforts in this respect but income is only part of the equation, you probably need a lot more information about the way the current money is spent.

No doubt spending will have to be curtailed as well as new sources of income found but perhaps we could curtail the ongoing cycle of improvements on the Thames that I sometimes think are as much about spending the current budget so that it is not reduced next year. I for one could live without the bank side improvements at Hurley, Chertsey, Shepperton and the paddle and Rymer weir replacements at various locations.

I never expected this, but I actually agree with that!
 
Regarding Go with the Flo, was coming back from cookham at the weekend and was the first boat out the lock, and that boat was the last one out. yet it managed to overtake everyone behind and then sat a few yards behind me just before the lock cut at cookham. I was convinced he was going to overtake me in the lock cut, if it wasn't for some boats coming out the lock going upstream.
When we came out of boulters, he was again a few boats back, and behind a narrow boat. I was watching behind and sure enough, he was taligating the narrow boat (as he couldn't get passed). He then overtook the narrow boat by the maidenhead rowing club, causing a huge wake that I could see had lifted all the rowers support boats almost out the water!!
Quite why he bothered I don't know, as from what I could see, he is moored upstream of the lock at Bray, so it's not as if he was racing to beat the other boats through the lock.
 
Top