BBC reports on CC

[Best Mate]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36046323

 

Just seen this, in the news section on the BBC website, wouldn't really call it news. Do you think this coverage will help the family or Hinder?

[Alan de Enfield]

It is a fairly well balanced for those who 'understand' the situation and the requirements - however, the 'man on the Clapham Omnibus' would probably think that C&RT are being unreasonable and heavy handed by not allowing children to attend their school.

[alan_fincher]

Most of the readership on here will know that a statement like.....

 

Like most of the 32,000 canal boats (more than during the Industrial Revolution) their boat is licensed as a "continuous cruiser", without a home mooring - which can be very hard to come by.

 

 

is complete nonsense.

 

However I suspect that most of Joe Public reading it will not.

 

I suspect if they used the true version of events, (i.e. that the vast majority of the 32,000 boats do have a permanent mooring) that it would make a less dramatic story.

 

I do get sick and tired of these pieces that just get some of the most basic facts completely wrong.

[mayalld]

It is a fairly well balanced for those who 'understand' the situation and the requirements - however, the 'man on the Clapham Omnibus' would probably think that C&RT are being unreasonable and heavy handed by not allowing children to attend their school.

 

You mean apart from the grossly inaccurate and misleading statement that most boats are CCers?

 

And the entirely meaningless statistic about the number of residential moorings advertised by ONE supplier?

 

Just the BBC spouting the NBTA party line that it is SOOO unfair that people have to obey the rules.

[Alan de Enfield]

Saying there are 100s of residential moorings available in marinas around the country does not quite have the same impact, as saying C&RT have only 6 moorings available across the whole of England and Wales

[Martin Megson]

Interesting that this is published the day before NBTA hold a protest in London.

[Alan de Enfield]

 

You mean apart from the grossly inaccurate and misleading statement that most boats are CCers?

 

And the entirely meaningless statistic about the number of residential moorings advertised by ONE supplier?

 

Just the BBC spouting the NBTA party line that it is SOOO unfair that people have to obey the rules.

 

Cross posted (I am a slow typist) re the mooring numbers.

 

I did say that for those that understand the situation it is probably as well balanced as any article

[X Alan W]

Having given up boating due to family illness before the influx of people making their homes on boats & the mooring/ c cruising set up, the thing that springs to my mind, is that surely the onus is on the boat owner to know/understand the rules & regs & should they choose to have a cc license they should not be surprised if they fail to comply they will face problems maybe there are no moorings in the area they wish to moor, but surely they should check on this first, in all other forms of payment of licenses complying with regs failure to conform results in action of one form or other, not a goodly amount of whinging, p**s taking, by the boat owners not complying does this fall under the " every one is out of step but me"whilst i can appreciate there are are cock ups & C&RT exceeding there remit, some owners complying rather than bending the rules would possibly bring about less hassle, whose to know as I guess it will never come to pass.

Edited April 15, 2016 by X Alan W

[Dave_P]

We have this article, the 'Off The Cut' film and the 'Boats Are Homes' demo about to happen. It does seem like a coordinated push.

 

The film and this article, both focus on the same stretch of the Kennet and Avon but make their points as if they apply nationally. They don't. The film also implies that most boaters are continuous cruisers. They aren't.

 

What we have is a specific issue to this stretch of the K&A. My interpretation is that, 10-15 years ago a few families took to living on this small stretch (remember the K&A only fully opened 25 years ago - so this is not an entrenched culture). The pioneers led the way for others who saw the benefits and BW did not take any serious action at the time. As time passed and the boating population grew on the K&A it simply became normal for the cc'ers there to shuffle about over 10 miles or so and get away with it, thinking it would be allowed forever. Occasional enforcement notices were dished out but no further action was taken so long as the boat then shuffled on a mile or so.

 

Fast forward to today and we have more and more people taking to the canals and a growing problem for hotspots like the K&A. Add the problems with the housing market into the mix, pushing people to look for cheaper options and its easy to see how a 'critical mass' is achieved.

 

Clearly, there's been a lot of families living on boats along there and they've become a community, which must have been lovely for them. The problem is that it's unsustainable in the wider context.

 

As a Birmingham boater, I'm not aware of a single cc'ing family in the whole Birmingham area. All the cc'ers I know and see are either single or couples. So why has this family orientated community grown up on the K&A? Well, once you have one or two pioneers, it normalises the idea for other families, but also this area has a long history of alternative and travelling communities, from earlier Romanys to New Age Travellers and the Battle of the Beanfield etc. It seems fairly logical to me that the travellers of the area from the 1980s would move onto the canal when other options were stripped away from them.

 

The harsh truth is that raising a family while cc'ing is difficult. That's why you hardly see anyone doing it in other parts of the country. Cc'ing for a single person with a fixed job takes a fair bit of organising, but I simply wouldn't attempt it if I had kids.

 

I've said before, nobody has an automatic right to live on the canal, this family choose to do so, but they could also choose not to. I do feel sorry for them though because they clearly had it very good for a long time, while BW looked the other way. They must have seen this day coming for years though, they aren't ostriches.

[Alan de Enfield]

Having given up boating due to family illness before the influx of people making their homes on boats & the mooring/ c cruising set up, the thing that springs to my mind, is that surely the onus is on the boat owner to know/understand the rules & regs & should they choose to have a cc license they should not be surprised if they fail to comply they will face problems maybe there are no moorings in the area they wish to moor, but surely they should check on this first, in all other forms of payment of licenses complying with regs failure to conform results in action of one form or other, not a goodly amount of whinging, p**s taking, by the boat owners not complying does this fall under the " every one is out of step but me"whilst i can appreciate there are are cock ups & C&RT exceeding there remit, some owners complying rather than bending the rules would possibly bring about less hassle, whose to know as I guess it will never come to pass.

 

Very true.

 

I have tried to think of any similar licences that have conditions attached that means the licence can be revoked and, there are not many :

 

TV licence - No

Car 'tax disc' - No

Firearms licence- Yes

 

There are various 'commercial' licences (such as selling alcohol, running a waste tip. etc etc) but very few for 'Joe public'.

 

In fact - as a nation we have very few 'licences'.

Maybe that is because basically a licence is permission to do something that it would be illegal to do without that permission, and, in this country country everything is allowable unless specifically declared illegal.

[boathunter]

We have this article, the 'Off The Cut' film and the 'Boats Are Homes' demo about to happen. It does seem like a coordinated push.

 

The film and this article, both focus on the same stretch of the Kennet and Avon but make their points as if they apply nationally. They don't. The film also implies that most boaters are continuous cruisers. They aren't.

 

What we have is a specific issue to this stretch of the K&A. My interpretation is that, 10-15 years ago a few families took to living on this small stretch (remember the K&A only fully opened 25 years ago - so this is not an entrenched culture). The pioneers led the way for others who saw the benefits and BW did not take any serious action at the time. As time passed and the boating population grew on the K&A it simply became normal for the cc'ers there to shuffle about over 10 miles or so and get away with it, thinking it would be allowed forever. Occasional enforcement notices were dished out but no further action was taken so long as the boat then shuffled on a mile or so.

 

Fast forward to today and we have more and more people taking to the canals and a growing problem for hotspots like the K&A. Add the problems with the housing market into the mix, pushing people to look for cheaper options and its easy to see how a 'critical mass' is achieved.

 

Clearly, there's been a lot of families living on boats along there and they've become a community, which must have been lovely for them. The problem is that it's unsustainable in the wider context.

 

As a Birmingham boater, I'm not aware of a single cc'ing family in the whole Birmingham area. All the cc'ers I know and see are either single or couples. So why has this family orientated community grown up on the K&A? Well, once you have one or two pioneers, it normalises the idea for other families, but also this area has a long history of alternative and travelling communities, from earlier Romanys to New Age Travellers and the Battle of the Beanfield etc. It seems fairly logical to me that the travellers of the area from the 1980s would move onto the canal when other options were stripped away from them.

 

The harsh truth is that raising a family while cc'ing is difficult. That's why you hardly see anyone doing it in other parts of the country. Cc'ing for a single person with a fixed job takes a fair bit of organising, but I simply wouldn't attempt it if I had kids.

 

I've said before, nobody has an automatic right to live on the canal, this family choose to do so, but they could also choose not to. I do feel sorry for them though because they clearly had it very good for a long time, while BW looked the other way. They must have seen this day coming for years though, they aren't ostriches.

I can't seem to alot green things on my phone, so you'll have to have a virtual one for that reasonable, open minded and non judgemental post.

[Dave_P]

I can't seem to alot green things on my phone, so you'll have to have a virtual one for that reasonable, open minded and non judgemental post.

Thanks. Greenies don't seem to be a mobile thing, sadly.

[Alan de Enfield]

To answer a previous question :

 

Boaters without a home mooring Monitoring review – March 2016

Headlines: 

During the first year just over 5600 licences for boats without a declared home mooring became due for renewal, so in line with the new process their movement patterns were reviewed 

Just under 40% were subject to a more detailed review for a variety of reasons, of which 1130 were offered a restricted licence. 

652 boats have so far taken out a restricted licences as a result of this process 

220 are still within that restricted licence period 

432 have reached the end of their restricted licence - 268 showed improvement and allowed further licence - 96 sold boat or obtained home mooring or moved away from our waters - 68 were refused a further CC licence, of which 45 remain in the enforcement process

[PaulG]

I find myself wondering why the "CC" clauses were included in the law in the first place.

 

Perhaps it was intended to accommodate what was left of the fleet of working boats. If that is the case (I don't know), then the people who lived and worked on these boats would, generally speaking, be on a "journey" as they moved cargo from one place to another.

 

Did the authours of the original legislation envisage that families might want to convert a boat into living accommodation and live permanently on the same few miles of canal?

 

Somehow I think not. If they had, then the legislation would surely have been written in a more clear and specific manner.

 

Perhaps members that have researched this aspect may be able to shed some light?

[Mike Todd]

 

You mean apart from the grossly inaccurate and misleading statement that most boats are CCers?

 

And the entirely meaningless statistic about the number of residential moorings advertised by ONE supplier?

 

Just the BBC spouting the NBTA party line that it is SOOO unfair that people have to obey the rules.

and that CaRT, if they could, would probably rather like not to be running a mooring scheme but to leave it to those who do it better. (ie can provide at least basic facilities - come of these

[Dave_P]

I find myself wondering why the "CC" clauses were included in the law in the first place.

 

Perhaps it was intended to accommodate what was left of the fleet of working boats. If that is the case (I don't know), then the people who lived and worked on these boats would, generally speaking, be on a "journey" as they moved cargo from one place to another.

 

Did the authours of the original legislation envisage that families might want to convert a boat into living accommodation and live permanently on the same few miles of canal? I don't see how they could have failed to consider it, since people were doing exactly as you describe, when the legislation was drafted, just in smaller numbers.

 

Somehow I think not. If they had, then the legislation would surely have been written in a more clear and specific manner. I'd prefer it if the legislation was clearer too, but somehow I think the vagueness was intentional. In law, the more specific you are, the easier it is to find ways round it. A vague approach leaves it to the courts to interpret. This is how many aspects of our legal system work. In allowing the courts to interpret the acts, a body of case law emerges which informs future cases and an enforcing body's enforcement approach. Continued success with the section 8 process and general enforcement (excepting Tony, Nigel and some others) has emboldened CRT to toughen up their approach.

 

Perhaps members that have researched this aspect may be able to shed some light?

Edited April 15, 2016 by Dave_P

[Tam & Di]

I find myself wondering why the "CC" clauses were included in the law in the first place.

 

 

There are several threads about this. By the 1990s an increasing number of boats (but still a small number) were taking to mooring on towpaths. BWB introduced a Bill into parliament and one small part of this proposed that all craft should have a permanent authorised mooring. There were objections to the proposal on the basis that many owners cruised steadily around the system and therefore had no requirement for a home mooring. The parliamentary committee asked BWB to revise their Bill in the light of this, but their revision was hasty and ill conceived - it said if a craft was "bona fide used for navigation" it did not have to have a home mooring. Unfortunately the phrase was not defined, and BWB and C&RT have been trying to deal with the consequences ever since.

 

Tam

[PaulG]

 

I find myself wondering why the "CC" clauses were included in the law in the first place.

 

Perhaps it was intended to accommodate what was left of the fleet of working boats. If that is the case (I don't know), then the people who lived and worked on these boats would, generally speaking, be on a "journey" as they moved cargo from one place to another.

 

Did the authours of the original legislation envisage that families might want to convert a boat into living accommodation and live permanently on the same few miles of canal? I don't see how they could have failed to consider it, since people were doing exactly as you describe, when the legislation was drafted, just in smaller numbers.

 

Somehow I think not. If they had, then the legislation would surely have been written in a more clear and specific manner. I'd prefer it if the legislation was clearer too, but somehow I think the vagueness was intentional. In law, the more specific you are, the easier it is to find ways round it. A vague approach leaves it to the courts to interpret. This is how many aspects of our legal system work. In allowing the courts to interpret the acts, a body of case law emerges which informs future cases and an enforcing body's enforcement approach. Continued success with the section 8 process and general enforcement (excepting Tony, Nigel and some others) has emboldened CRT to toughen up their approach.

 

Perhaps members that have researched this aspect may be able to shed some light?

 

I appreciate what you are saying. But it seems to me that much of the legal process is carried out in the lower courts, which (as I understand it), have no authority to establish case law.

Given that offences under the various waterways legislation would be unlikely to be viewed as particularly serious, then the legislators would/should be aware that any vagueness would, in reality, be unlikely to be resolved by the courts.

Which seems to be the case at the moment.

[Tony Dunkley]

I find myself wondering why the "CC" clauses were included in the law in the first place.

 

Perhaps it was intended to accommodate what was left of the fleet of working boats. If that is the case (I don't know), then the people who lived and worked on these boats would, generally speaking, be on a "journey" as they moved cargo from one place to another.

 

Did the authours of the original legislation envisage that families might want to convert a boat into living accommodation and live permanently on the same few miles of canal?

 

Somehow I think not. If they had, then the legislation would surely have been written in a more clear and specific manner.

 

Perhaps members that have researched this aspect may be able to shed some light?

 

No possibility of that whatsoever.

The last of the survivors from the 'fleet' of working narrowboats had gone from the canals some twenty or more years before the 1995 legislation was even drafted.

[Dave_P]

 

No possibility of that whatsoever.

The last of the survivors from the 'fleet' of working narrowboats had gone from the canals some twenty or more years before the 1995 legislation was even drafted.

I know you'll say it's a different thing, but current coal boats are effectively doing the same thing as their forebears - moving cargo around while living on their boats. They're even doing it in the same boats.

[Tam & Di]

I know you'll say it's a different thing, but current coal boats are effectively doing the same thing as their forebears - moving cargo around while living on their boats. They're even doing it in the same boats.

 

And they doubtless count many owners moored on towpaths among their customers. However it is not really relevant here, and if they gave up their trading licence they would be subject to exactly the same licensing conditions as other pleasure boaters.

 

Tam

[PaulG]

I know you'll say it's a different thing, but current coal boats are effectively doing the same thing as their forebears - moving cargo around while living on their boats. They're even doing it in the same boats.

That's what I was thinking of..

[Martin Megson]

 

Very true.

 

I have tried to think of any similar licences that have conditions attached that means the licence can be revoked and, there are not many :

 

TV licence - No

Car 'tax disc' - No

Firearms licence- Yes

 

There are various 'commercial' licences (such as selling alcohol, running a waste tip. etc etc) but very few for 'Joe public'.

 

In fact - as a nation we have very few 'licences'.

Maybe that is because basically a licence is permission to do something that it would be illegal to do without that permission, and, in this country country everything is allowable unless specifically declared illegal.

How about prisoners released on licence. Break the conditions and you're put in jail.

[Martin Megson]

 

Very true.

 

I have tried to think of any similar licences that have conditions attached that means the licence can be revoked and, there are not many :

 

TV licence - No

Car 'tax disc' - No

Firearms licence- Yes

 

There are various 'commercial' licences (such as selling alcohol, running a waste tip. etc etc) but very few for 'Joe public'.

 

In fact - as a nation we have very few 'licences'.

Maybe that is because basically a licence is permission to do something that it would be illegal to do without that permission, and, in this country country everything is allowable unless specifically declared illegal.

How about prisoners released on licence. Break the conditions and you're put in jail.

[dmr]

A non judgemental observation (though possibly slightly political for which I don't apologise)

 

None of us actually has the right to get a good education for a kids, in general the more wealthy we are the better education our kids get.

At the top end there are the public (private!) schools.

Otherwise, with a few exceptions, kids in wealthy areas get a better education.

One of the main factors driving house prices is the quality of the local school.

Bluntly, if you are wealthy you buy a house near a good school.

Bradford on Avon is a wealthy place with good schools and a few boaters have cleverly found a way to get a very good education for their children even though they could maybe not afford a house in that area.

I am aware of a couple of BoA boat children that went to Oxford and Cambridge.

Its hard to blame the boaters concerned, in their position I would do the same, in fact with hindsight I wish I had done the same, but its not an easy position to defend.

 

...............Dave