The NBTA is raising the alarm as Canal & River Trust (CRT) announces a new ‘review’ of boat licensing which could see the end of the itinerant boating community.
What has CRT said?
On 16th December 2024, CRT unveiled a document that clearly outlines its intention to remove itinerant boat dwellers. This is the first document in which CRT explicitly states that it views the community of boat dwellers without home moorings as a problem, advocating for changes to the law to address this ‘problem’. The document claims that the community has ‘created challenges for the Trust both from ‘an operational, financial and reputational perspective’ and in dealing with the so-called ‘challenges’ CRT is seeking changes to the law, pointing to its issues with the Human Rights Act 1998, the Equality Act 2010, and the British Waterways Act 1995 — the legislation that enshrines our community’s legal protection to exist.
In this document, CRT announced that it has appointed an ‘independently led’ commission to review a future legislative framework for how boats on its waterways are licensed. It claimed that the commission will ‘identify and evaluate alternative models for how to regulate the use of the canal network for boating that reflects the changes to its use over the past 30 years and the likely range of future uses’. Currently, the rights of itinerant boaters to live on the waterways are underpinned by Section 17(3)(c)(ii) of the 1995 British Waterways Act, which provides that a vessel may be licensed without a permanent mooring as long as it is ’used bona fide for navigation throughout the period for which the consent is valid without remaining continuously in any one place for more than 14 days or such longer period as is reasonable in the circumstances’.
The commission is scheduled to begin in January 2025 by first ratifying the CRT’s ‘Terms of Reference’, and is expected to run until at least September 2025 when its recommendations will be considered by CRT’s board of trustees.
What does CRT really want?
Despite CRT’s claims that various proposals for legislative reforms will be considered, a few key articles in its attached ‘Terms of Reference’ make it clear that, once again, it is clearly gunning for the small community of Bargee Travellers – itinerant boat dwellers living on its waterways.
CRT writes that ‘a significant and growing number of those boats licensed as a continuous cruiser cannot reasonably be said to be genuinely navigating throughout their licence period and, instead, remain in one relatively small part of the network for most if not all of the time, to live and work in that area without obtaining a home mooring’. The claim that boaters who remain in one general area are not ‘genuinely’ navigating has been ruled against in two County Court judgements. Legal Opinions obtained by the NBTA and other boating organisations are consistent with these judgements.
Later in the document, CRT writes that this population ‘has created challenges for the Trust both from an operational, financial and reputational perspective’ before going on to lament the fact that ‘the current legislation predates the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010, which both have significant implications for the Trust’s boat licensing and enforcement approach, particularly in relation to continuous cruisers and residential vessels’.
Before the review has even convened, CRT’s foregone conclusion reads loud and clear. It thinks that the itinerant boat dweller community – even when operating entirely within their rights and the law – are a nuisance, a burden and an embarrassment, and CRT wants to get rid of us by finding methods for circumventing legislation designed to prevent discrimination. All this from a charitable trust, funded in part by public money, entrusted with a public asset and with a tag-line of ‘Making Life Better By Water’.
Why are boaters worried?
Sadly, much of the itinerant boater community has already experienced CRT’s hostility first hand via its increasingly draconian enforcement and various anti-boater policies like the recent licence surcharge levied on boats without a home mooring, the introduction of unaffordable ‘chargeable moorings’ across London and the attempted clearance of boats from large swathes of the waterways including Birmingham and East London. However, for CRT to speak so openly and brazenly about its hostility towards the very existence of our community is a deeply worrying escalation.
The rights of itinerant boaters to live on their boats whilst navigating the waterways has been enshrined in common law and practice since the construction of the canals (and before that in the case of navigable rivers), and codified specifically in the British Waterways Act 1995. It is a law that, alongside the anti-discrimination legislation that CRT resents having to abide by, has enabled the small but tight-knit itinerant boater population to survive the transition of the waterways from a government department to a charitable trust and thrive symbiotically with this unique part of our national landscape/infrastructure.
It appears that CRT aims to remove our community and replace us with more profitable alternatives. If recent history is any indication, these options will likely include chargeable towpath moorings for leisure boats, business moorings, and selling off public land to private developers.
Speaking out of both sides of its mouth: Untangling CRTs hostility towards the itinerant boater community
The communications from CRT about the aims of this review/commission make for a bleak picture. It claims that itinerant boaters – regardless of whether they are acting in accordance with the law – create ‘operational, financial and reputational’ challenges for CRT. How exactly are boaters without home moorings an ‘‘operational, financial and reputational’ challenge’?
Operationally, itinerant boaters complying with the British Waterways Act 1995 offer no challenges other than an obligation to keep the waterways maintained – in other words, the entire stated purpose of CRT’s existence. Whether a boater moves 20 or 200 miles in a year is operationally irrelevant. As long as boaters keep the system fluid (and fulfil their legal obligations) by moving on within 14 days, the existence of local ties to employment, education, family or whatever else keeps them in a general locality is of no relevance to their impact on the system as a whole, and – quite frankly – none of CRTs business. Much is made in the Terms of Reference of the increasing number of boats on the network over the last 30 years, despite the fact that boat numbers as of 2024 are actually now decreasing, with the largest drop being in London and the South East (which CRT often cites as a particular hotspot for ‘overcrowding’). The total number of ‘continuous cruisers’ still stands at less than 7000 boats across the entire 2000 mile CRT network. Nothing, of course, is mentioned in the ‘Terms of Reference’ about the centrality of itinerant boaters in keeping the network ‘operational’, with itinerant boaters flagging and fixing issues with locks, towpaths, facilities and the cut itself, keeping both each other and non-boaters safe in places that were once seen as no-go areas, and acting as unpaid but willing tour guides/tourist attractions/security guards for the many visitors to the UK’s canal network each year.
Financially, itinerant boaters not only pay a licence fee in order to navigate the waterways, but since April 2024 they actually pay more than those boaters with a home mooring. The majority of boats licensed on CRT waterways are moored in private marinas for much of the year, where they pay mooring fees to private companies, and yet it is itinerant boaters – now hit with a licence surcharge going up to 25% over the standard licence within the next four years – that are being singled out as a ‘financial challenge’. This surcharge, despite being clearly rejected by an overwhelming majority of boaters during CRT’s last flawed ‘consultation’ process, was introduced on the premise that CRT needed to raise money. Now, apparently, itinerant boaters’ non-existence is actually worth more to CRT than a surcharge initially justified entirely on fund-raising arguments.
Reputationally, CRT regularly makes use of the itinerant boater population as a marketing tool to demonstrate the vitality, community and idiosyncrasy of the British waterways. Boaters’ homes, faces and events are plastered over CRTs communications as proof of their ‘Making Life Better By Water’ mantra. All this despite the fact that, off camera, most of CRTs interaction with the itinerant boating community is one of hostility, enforcement and non-engagement with repeated boater requests for constructive discussions. This statement looks like little more than yet another example of the age-old dog whistle about ‘scruffy’ boaters on lower incomes whose lifestyles and appearances don’t conform to CRTs fetishised and gentrified ideals of the boating community. These are precisely the kinds of attitudes that the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010 exist to prevent being reflected in discriminatory legislation or enforcement. This explains why CRT is so frustrated by this legal bulwark against its excesses.
Why, then, does CRT want to get rid of a community that helps to keep the canals running, pays their way and has acted as the custodian of the canal system since the end of its industrial story? Why is it happy to photograph us and our homes on a sunny day and make us the diverse, vibrant, accessible face of the canal, but then turn around and tell us that our hardworking, independent and community-based lifestyles are a challenge that needs to be legislated against? Itinerant boaters know that it is discrimination and marginalisation, pure and simple. A hostility to our way of life, and an eye to turning a public asset that itinerant boaters have helped to keep public into a fire-sale for private development.
Why does this matter to non-boaters?
For the millions of non-boaters with connections to their local waterway, itinerant boaters are an essential part of the appeal. The presence of boats brings with it a vibrancy, community, colour and security that was singularly lacking on much of the network in the latter half of the 20th century. Today, everyone from commuters, dog-walkers, runners, water-sports enthusiasts, tourists and those in need of an escape into green space have access to canals that are lived on, cared for and yet not owned or possessed by any one person – a rare thing indeed in the UK.
Not only do itinerant boaters provide a draw to the canals for the curious, and a watchful eye for those who might not have ventured onto them when they lay empty, but they also form a line of defence for this much loved public space against the creep of privatisation. In many less-populated parts of the network, CRT has sold off what was once public land in a financially illiterate bid to plug funding gaps caused by its own mismanagement. If they are allowed to remove the itinerant boaters that keep the towpath and the cut as genuinely public space, be assured that these green corridors will increasingly be lost to private developers.
Even for those people who have no connection to the waterways in particular, many will be deeply concerned that a small and unique community is being singled out and targeted for elimination by a major national charity. If CRT is successful in lobbying government for the kinds of legislative reform that it clearly seeks, thousands of boaters – including the large numbers of pensioners, families and people with disabilities who live on boats – will be made homeless and isolated from their community, their way of life and the waterways on which they’ve lived for years, decades or their whole lives. The most likely result of an abandonment of the British Waterways Act 1995 will, in reality, be a highly conflictual, unpleasant and incredibly expensive process whereby boaters with no other place to go refuse to leave their homes, whilst CRT spend millions on legal battles and enforcement to put them out onto the streets.
The fact that this process – that existentially threatens an entire community – is being kicked off with a commission that is opaque, in no way ‘independent’ and underpinned by highly biased and discriminatory ‘Terms of Reference’ should be a source of concern for anyone who values due process, transparency and genuine engagement with stakeholders. If a public, charitable organisation like CRT is able to destroy an entire community and way of life through such underhand tactics, circumventing Human Rights and Equality legislation in the process, it should be of great concern to anyone who values the democratic process and the right to live outside of the whims of highly paid and unaccountable executives who are systematically dismantling and impoverishing the UKs public infrastructure.
CRT’s Press Release announcing its ‘independent’ commission can be found here: https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/boating/boating-news-and-views/boating-news/commission-to-review-future-framework-for-boat-licensing with the ‘Terms of Reference’ here: https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/media/document/aR16jOcplroBLCfMeEK3Yg/q0hNS_IGTCcZrdyOIk-DGPImCLa55YeYm2e4E5cPYvg/aHR0cHM6Ly9jcnRwcm9kY21zdWtzMDEuYmxvYi5jb3JlLndpbmRvd3MubmV0L2RvY3VtZW50Lw/0193d048-747c-7d32-a999-6c67f81b60d3.pdf
The British Waterways Act 1995 can be found here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/1995/1/enacted, the Human Rights Act 1998 can be found here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/contents and the Equality Act 2010 can be found here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents
The County Court judgements mentioned are as follows: In a case in 2011 (British Waterways v Davies, 2011 – unreported, Bristol County Court), the judge disagreed with the extent of navigation that the then British Waterways (BW) claimed was required to comply with the British Waterways Act 1995; this led to BW revising its Mooring Guidance for Continuous Cruisers to remove the stated requirement to travel around the whole of the waterway network or a significant part of it. In a case in 2013 (Canal & River Trust v Mayers, 2013 – unreported, Chester County Court), the judge stated that the requirement to use the boat ‘bona fide for navigation’ was temporal, not geographical, and that even if a boat was routinely moved back and forth for a mile between two points (such as the Mersey Ferry), depending on the purpose of the journeys, the navigation would be ‘bona fide’ in line with the British Waterways Act 1995.
A few recent examples of CRT selling off public assets can be found here: https://marineandmaritime.com/canal-river-trust-completes-sale-marinas-bwml-management/ here: https://narrowboatworld.com/12463-lock-keepers-cottages-at-auction and here: https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/news-and-views/news/historic-braunston-stop-house-set-to-go-under-the-hammer
The 2024 CRT Boat Count can be found here: https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/news-and-views/news/national-boat-count-2024?gad_source=1