The NBTA has published its full response to the Future of Licensing Report by the Canal & River Trust (CRT) Commission on Boat Licensing.
CRT announced on 16th December 2024 that a Commission would review the future of boat licensing, and published the Commission’s membership and Terms of Reference (ToR), to which the NBTA published its response on 13th January 2025. CRT then commissioned a survey carried out by Campbell Tickell which was published on 3rd March 2025, to which the NBTA published its response on 6th July 2025. In October 2025, the Commission published its final Report, which includes 36 recommendations and an Annex illustrating a possible model of movement requirements.
Overall, the NBTA does not accept the Report as a valid basis for changes to boat licensing, because:
- The Report demonstrates how the absence of meaningful engagement with key stakeholders has led to several recommendations that will be not only unwelcome to many, but unworkable in practice. The Commission had no representation from boaters without a home mooring, despite being created to address licences for this community, CRT misrepresenting one member as a liveaboard ‘former continuous cruiser and lifelong boater’. The Commission declined the offer of a second meeting with NBTA representatives in September 2025.
- In our response to the ToR, we pointed out that the Commission’s chair was appointed and paid by CRT, and the Commission was overseen by CRT’s Board of Trustees. The Report provides no further information about its processes, mechanisms or relationship to CRT that would reassure readers of its transparency, independence or impartiality.
- The Report acknowledges the methodological weaknesses of the survey, which we also pointed out in our response to the survey. Though the recommendations disproportionately affect boats without home moorings, no additional weighting in the Commission’s work was given to respondents from that group. An occasional towpath user was prioritised equally with a boater whose life will be transformed by these recommendations.
- The recommendations are at times inconsistent with CRT’s own charitable objects and existing policy, and also fail to recognise existing powers.
- The Report does not provide constructive solutions about how to get currently unlicensed boats re-licensed and back on the move. The recommendations tend to take a punitive, rather than supportive, approach to licence compliance, which we predict will lead to an increase in enforcement issues and a greater number of unlicensed boats, not a resolution of these problems.
You can read and download the full NBTA Response to CRT’s ‘The Future of Licensing: Report of the Commission on Boat Licensing’ here 2026-01-30 NBTA response to CRT Future of Licensing report