Liveaboards being evicted in UK

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born2sail61 said:
signed. There but for the grace of god etc.....whilst i don't fully support freeloaders,i would rather see them on their own boats than claiming vast amounts of housing benefits. I struggle to pay my rent every month and the temptation is move aboard gets stronger everyday...
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PLUS ONE

Much obliged to Snowleopard for pointing out the anarchic implications and to Bilbo for explaining the situation so very elegantly

I have gladly signed. At the end of the legal bishbosh, no one has gained in a very worthy way have they?

There are far worse 'irregularities' in society that would be worthy of the legal cogs grinding and fee earning than a few discrete, introverted and quiet eccentrics living on canal boats.

In America the deal is that a boat has to ( be capable of) a move once a year, there used to be flotillas of iffy old houseboats wallowing out onto a calm as a millpond sea and back on the calmest day of the year, many towed and running standby generators, pumps, ....

The very existence of BTL 'investors' scarcely eases pressure on housing this countrys inhabitants in a secure way either. Cant wait till society nails that one back to some sort of centralist stance back from 'sod the consequences' extremist greed.. I reckon half of the liberty boating done on here is funded heftily by leveraging renters eh?
 
Blueboatman, 'liberty boating' and 'leveraging renters', can you translate please? Also BTL. Cheers Jerry. I'm not arguing or anything, I am literally ignorant of the meanings of these terms!
 
I've been entertained for about 1hr reading this thread, I am surprised so many were willing to sign the petition though. !!!

For me it's seems simple

1. Want to live aboard....... Permanent mooring required.
2. Pay the waterway charges plus any council tax required.
3. Be happy to abide by the rules.

Anything outside of that is not negotiable, if you choose to be a permanent cruiser, that's what you must be.

Tom.
 
snowleopard said:
For those who have signed without reading post #10,
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I have to say that I was one of the ones who signed before getting this far in the thread and I wished I hadn't signed now. Thanks to snowleopard, tranona and others for putting the other side of the argument
 
I've been reading these threads with considerable interest but keeping my counsel ... until now :)

As some of you may already know, we spent many many years boating on the canals before making to move to coastal sailing and I've been involved in waterways politics at the highest level (IWA Council / Trustee)

Let's get some facts straight ...

The Canal & River Trust (CART) is not a QUANGO, it's predessor British Waterways (BW) was but CART is a Charitable Trust endowed by the government similar in structure to the National Trust

There is NO right of navigation, right of mooring or (especially) right of residence on the canals and rivers managed by CART

There are (of relevance to this matter) three types of licence ...

A standard licence can only be obtained for vessels with a legitimate recognised permanent home mooring. There is no specific limitations on usage but the expectation is that the licensed vessel will be either on it's home mooring or cruising

A continous cruising licence* caters for people who are constantly on the move and usually (but not always) living aboard. The expectation is that the vessel will be doing what the name on the licence says i.e. continously cruising and not hanging about in the same locality permanently

* technically this is just a standard licence but with a declaration by the owner that the boat is "continuously cruising" and therefore does not have a home mooring

A residential licence is only issued to vessels moored on a legitimate residential mooring. Such moorings are rarer than hens teeth and highly sought after. They require local authority planning permission in most cases and the consent of the navigation authority. There is NO ad-hoc arrangement such as has been mentioned about living aboard yachts etc in coastal marinas and enforcement actions by LA planning departments against illegal liveaboards in marinas are not unheard of.

CART, and previously BW, have the power to seize and remove vessels that are on the waterways they manage without permission or in breach of the licence terms under Section 8 of the British Waterways Act 1983. For legal reasons, where the owner is, or claims to be, in residence on the vessel enforcing the Section 8 notice is carried out by Court Order. This is not a quick or arbitrary process, it takes on average from 18 months to two years to go from the initial contact between the licensing enforcement team and the vessel owner to a Section 8 seizure and such seizures are only carried out as a last resort

British Waterways have been heavily criticised for many years (decades in fact) for failing to adequtely address the growing problem of unlicensed vessels and illegal moorings. Lack of political will, lack of resources and the complex and costly due process all conspired to allow the problem to grow to epic proportions in some locations. The new Trust undertook with legitimate users to address this problem as a priority

And why is it a problem? Well I wonder how you would feel if you were paying £2k-3k a year for your mooring and then getting on for another grand a year for your annual licence only to find that the bloke next door was paying nothing at all and getting away with it because the marina and the harbour authority couldn't be bothered to chase him for the money?

Worse, how would you feel if every decent destination a day or two away from your home mooring had become an effective no-go area because all the available moorings had become the home of illegal liveaboards?

And to make matters worse how would your sailing or motor boating enjoyment be affected if you were having to throttle back and slow down every couple of hundred yards because of yet another moored boat* (latterly on some stretches of canal it has become all but impossible to make progress at more than a mile or two an hour due to almost continuous linear moorings most of which never move from one month to the next)

* It is a centuries old practice and tradition on the canals that you pass a moored boat at tickover (or risk incurring the wrath of the boatwoman in days of yore!). The canals are too narrow and shallow to do otherwise without causing major disturbance and potential damage to the moored boat. Of course, this tradition is as often as not ignored by Johnny Come Latelys to the cut but I cannot bring myself to blast past moored boats at full chat and nor can most of the "old guard" who learned their boating from the last of the working boatmen

And I really am not kidding. This has become the situation in a considerable number of locations around the country and it urgently needed addressing

Of course the case of "Maggie" is distressing but the plain fact is that she and others of her ilk chose to adopt a lifestyle that was in flagrant contravention of the planning laws and the waterways byelaws. If you are discreet and careful you can get away with it but living aboard a narrowboat other than on a legitimate residential mooring is simply not compatible with holding down a permanent job, sending the childen to school or for that matter needing ongoing healthcare at a fixed location

And no, there is no precise definition of cruising as such. Generally it is accepted as not overstaying on signposted short term moorings (usually 48 hour, 7 day or 14 day) and not spending more than about one month in any twelve month period in the same parish but these are rough guidelines. It's common sense and in practice it is pretty obvious whether a boat is genuinely cruising or "towpath lurking"
 
unfortunately i can't seem to do quotes on my not so smart phone,but i'll try and get a point across anyway.i don't pay 2-3k p.a for moorings, i pay 9k house rent instead.no benefits of any kind and i work b****y hard to keep my head above water.no one is removing all the benefit bums from there cosy paid for existence.this is a far bigger problem than a few eccentrics living on boats.but nobody does a thing about mainstream scroungers,safety in numbers perhaps?
 
Let's not, ahem, muddy the waters! This has nothing to do with benefit scroungers or anything else of that nature. It's a specific problem (albeit with parallels to the problems landowners have with travellers etc.) between the lawful authority that owns and manages the inland waterways and a disparate group of people who have chosen to ignore the long established bylaws with regard to licensing and mooring
 
but you asked how you would feel if you were paying 3k moorings and the guy next door was paying nothing? It's the same situation surely? ,but a lot more serious and widespread.
 
born2sail61 said:
but you asked how you would feel if you were paying 3k moorings and the guy next door was paying nothing? It's the same situation surely? ,but a lot more serious and widespread.
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No, you are falling into the same trap as the protesters who see this issue in housing terms rather than complying with the terms of a cruising licence. You are seeing this is terms of inequality in financial terms. Not the same things at all. The problem for CRT is ensuring people comply with the terms of the contracts they have.
 
So the fact that these poor people have lost their homes,and hence will become even more of a burden on the state finances is immaterial? As long as problem is off the water it's okay? Free up half a dozen moorings at any cost? I wonder how much all the legalities cost the CRT?
 
born2sail61 said:
So the fact that these poor people have lost their homes,and hence will become even more of a burden on the state finances is immaterial? As long as problem is off the water it's okay? Free up half a dozen moorings at any cost? I wonder how much all the legalities cost the CRT?
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You're still really missing the point. These "homes" were never legally homes, any more than a tent on a village green or a caravan in a supermarket car park is legally a home. The people in question knowingly, and this is important, I say again knowingly chose to break the law. It is not the responsibility of CART to provide a social service for homeless people (and indeed legally the trustees of the Trust would be skating on thin ice if they did so because they have a legal duty to carry out the aims of the Trust and not to spend the trusts money on goals or objectives outside of those aims)
 
born2sail61 said:
So the fact that these poor people have lost their homes,and hence will become even more of a burden on the state finances is immaterial? As long as problem is off the water it's okay? Free up half a dozen moorings at any cost? I wonder how much all the legalities cost the CRT?
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Erbas has summed it up, but just to reinforce the point. The people who break the terms of their licence, or do not pay a licence at all know exactly what they are doing. They use housing type arguments to avoid the reality of their situation and seek to persuade others (for example through the petition that started this thread) that they are being victimised. They do not meet the definition of continuous cruisers which is what they have a licence for.
 
Tranona said:
I trust that those who have signed the "petition" or suggested that CRT have acted incorrectly have read all the material related to the case - and not just taken the flawed petition as the only source.

The CRT is NOT a charity with a remit to provide housing for the homeless or disabled, nor to provide help for people who are unable to help themselves. They can only work within their own terms of reference. The decisions about evictions and how to help the persons involved is not made by them, but legitimately by the courts and the bodies, both statutory and voluntary, that do have that remit.
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Not signed. Please - those that have signed - understand that the CRT is not there to provide people with free berths. Greece suffers the same problems from some - not all - of the live-aboard community who block or fill harbours and prevent them making money from facilities. I have sympathy but the world is a tough place.
 
I would have thought with a housing crisis and many miles of canals that encouraging broader usage would make economic sense. Seems an awful waste of resources to me to be flinging people onto local councils and other bodies.
 
dgadee said:
I would have thought with a housing crisis and many miles of canals that encouraging broader usage would make economic sense. Seems an awful waste of resources to me to be flinging people onto local councils and other bodies.
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Surely the canals were built for travel? Caravans 'moored' on the roads?

John G
 
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