"Permanent Mooring"

[Heffalump]

3 minutes ago, Chewbacka said:

Yes I know, and you were clear, I should have made more clear that as others were suggesting to you to go down the ghost mooring route as it can be a lot cheaper, I just thought I would warn you of the possible problems if you do.

Thanks.  I wouldn't feel comfortable with a ghost mooring anyway from a moral standpoint.  The next sticking point would be to find a marina who would let us stay on the boat on the mooring for a week or two every 2-3 months.

[Arthur Marshall]

6 minutes ago, Heffalump said:

I wasn't very clear on this, but I do intend on having a mooring which is used for two weeks every 10 weeks or so, depending on how many nice stops there are along the way

As said above, that keeps you clearly compliant, and you can tell anyone who argues to push off! 

[MtB]

On 15/07/2017 at 17:07, Heffalump said:

I find the first point to be true.  There just aren't any residential moorings around me.

PS - if anyone can find a residential mooring within commuting distance to Brackley and Bicester, please let me know!

 

That's not what you first said!

It's not within CRT's gift to provide plentiful residential moorings. For that you need PP, which local councils rarely grant. Usually as a result of fierce local opposition.

Hang on, it was Horace42 I thought I was quibbling with!

[Heffalump]

2 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

That's not what you first said!

It's not within CRT's gift to provide plentiful residential moorings. For that you need PP, which local councils rarely grant. Usually as a result of fierce local opposition.

Hang on, it was Horace42 I thought I was quibbling with!

haha - I was just agreeing with him saying that a lack of moorings leads to people trying to get around the regs

[MtB]

On 15/07/2017 at 17:17, Heffalump said:

haha - I was just agreeing with him saying that a lack of moorings leads to people trying to get around the regs

 

I very much disagree. it's the cost of a mooring regardless of whether it is residential or not, that leads peeps to attempt to circumvent the regs.

[Heffalump]

3 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

I very much disagree. it's the cost of a mooring regardless of whether it is residential or not, that leads peeps to attempt to circumvent the regs.

Of course, I can only speak for myself.  If there were 10 spare residential moorings on the south Oxford, all priced up at £x per annum I would look at them and then decide whether I could afford one.  If I couldn't afford a mooring then I wouldn't continue looking at getting a boat until I could.

My situation is that I would happily pay for a residential mooring if there were one for me to pay for!

I can see your point many might look at the price and decide they weren't going to pay for it but still wanted the benefits so just take them.

[Arthur Marshall]

22 minutes ago, Heffalump said:

Of course, I can only speak for myself.  If there were 10 spare residential moorings on the south Oxford, all priced up at £x per annum I would look at them and then decide whether I could afford one.  If I couldn't afford a mooring then I wouldn't continue looking at getting a boat until I could.

My situation is that I would happily pay for a residential mooring if there were one for me to pay for!

I can see your point many might look at the price and decide they weren't going to pay for it but still wanted the benefits so just take them.

Trouble is, there are a lot of people in, if you'll pardon the phrase, the  same  boat. If there were another ten residential moorings, there would be fifty people after them & so on. What it comes down to is that the canal system  is not a housing estate, and CRT don't want it turned into one. 

[Mike Todd]

1 hour ago, Arthur Marshall said:

Personally, I don't think you'll find a definitive answer here.  The letter of the law says one thing, CRT says another, and you will possibly find yourself hassled by CRT's enforcement brigade (or whatever they're called this week) or even in court if you rely on the former while fairly obviously being aware that you are bending the spirit of the rules.  So it really comes down to whether you're up for the fight, which, as the law is rarely on the side of an individual as opposed to large important organisations, you might well lose - thus dropping a load of other people who try to live on the fuzzy edges into the mire with you...

Anything that CRT has ever said about "range" or "place" is just a guideline and has no legal validity, so you can't rely on that either, it's just advice, and they can change that any time they like.  as, of course, they have.

But while your marina may not be residential, they may be happy for you to spend a night a fortnight on your boat there, in which case you haven't a problem, because each time you go back to the marina (presumably for at least a day rather than just turning round and exiting again) the clock gets reset.  That would be safer than having a home mooring oop north you never visit at all.

In the end, it comes down to whether you want to pick a fight with CRT or not.  Some do, and some win.  Some don't.  Some ought to have done and still don't - right, wrong, fairness and legality don't have a lot to do with it, mostly it comes down to who has the most money and appetite for the fight.

You are being a bit light on the use of 'legal validity' in para 2.

Since CaRT cannot impose a minimum range directly, they can only give advice about how the Board is likely to determine whether a range is bona fide navigation when less than the stated amount. If the range for a specific boater is less than this amount and they decide not to accept the pattern then they are perfectly within their legal rights to reject a licence application (doubt seems to exist regarding their right to withdraw and extant licence)

Check the logic and you will discover that having a range just above the minimum stated does not prevent CaRT from rejecting it. As it stands, they could reject almost anyuthing, save fort he fact that they could be subject to a judicial review and might incur damages if they have acted unreasonably.

[MtB]

On 15/07/2017 at 17:26, Heffalump said:

Of course, I can only speak for myself.  If there were 10 spare residential moorings on the south Oxford, all priced up at £x per annum I would look at them and then decide whether I could afford one.  If I couldn't afford a mooring then I wouldn't continue looking at getting a boat until I could.

My situation is that I would happily pay for a residential mooring if there were one for me to pay for!

I can see your point many might look at the price and decide they weren't going to pay for it but still wanted the benefits so just take them.

 

I suspect you are of unusually strong moral fibre in that case. There are loads of boaters living happily under the radar on CRT leisure moorings.

Those boaters who CM generally do it to avoid the cost of a mooring of any type, I posit. It would seem faintly hypocritical of a boater to refuse to live on a leisure mooring because it is 'plain wrong' then adopt  the 'continuous moorer' lifestyle instead. 

[Jerra]

1 hour ago, Heffalump said:

This "cruising ranges" thing has been mentioned a couple of times, I've not come across it before, has anyone got a link?

The full document is here.

The relevant part says:

 Range: We look at the furthest points a boat has visited over the year, not just the total distance. While the British Waterways Act does not stipulate a distance, boaters often ask us to give them some indication of how they need to travel. We’ve said that it is very unlikely that anyone travelling a range of less than 20 miles (32km) would be able to satisfy us that they are bona fide navigating and that normally we would expect a greater range. If you’re cruising in a smaller range than this you may run into trouble when it comes to renewing your licence.

 

[Neil2]

Is the situation down south radically different from up north then?

The marina we are currently on in Staffordshire expressly allows residential boats provided they are not on the marina 52 weeks of the year,  I see those who do live on site occasionally move their boat a couple of miles down the towpath returning a few days later.  But there is certainly one liveaboard boat that has not moved in the 12 months we have been there.   We recently made enquiries with another marina in Lancashire and they admitted that at least a third of their boats are liveaboards but again they must make an effort to spend "a few weeks" off site every year.  Some of the boats there had clearly never moved since they arrived.    

So I'm thinking why can't the OP do something similar from, say,  Cropredy?  I presume that between them CRT and marinas that far south must have a much stricter attitude to enforcement, but I wonder where the "boundary" is.   

[MtB]

Almost all the marinas down here are firmly non-liveaboard. They will notice pretty quickly if you regularly arrive every evening and leave every morning and the postman brings mail and parcels for you and your chimney smokes all night nine months of the year. In addition they may well require sight of a council tax bill at a land address with your name on it.

This is I suspect, because planning permission for the marina was granted on specific condition that no liveaboards are accepted, and the owners fear enforcement action, not that there is any fundamental objection to liveaboards in the marinas other than from the local councils.

[Heffalump]

Looking again at this today, it would actually be two weeks in the marina every 18 weeks, that's only one fortnight every 4.5 months.

[MHS]

1 hour ago, Heffalump said:

Looking again at this today, it would actually be two weeks in the marina every 18 weeks, that's only one fortnight every 4.5 months.

I can't see that causing the marina a problem. 

I assume you're planning to get to Brackley by car. If so, you have a good range of canals to explore. You're not that far away from work, even if you cruised up to Braunston and round to Stoke Bruerne and Milton Keynes. You are basically circling Brackley. 

[Heffalump]

28 minutes ago, MHS said:

I can't see that causing the marina a problem. 

I assume you're planning to get to Brackley by car. If so, you have a good range of canals to explore. You're not that far away from work, even if you cruised up to Braunston and round to Stoke Bruerne and Milton Keynes. You are basically circling Brackley. 

My thoughts entirely, our only secondary concern then would be three trips to Bicester a week, but even then we aren't so far away.

Now I just need to broach the idea with the local marinas to see how receptive they are, I've never been any good at that!

[Neil2]

11 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

Almost all the marinas down here are firmly non-liveaboard. They will notice pretty quickly if you regularly arrive every evening and leave every morning and the postman brings mail and parcels for you and your chimney smokes all night nine months of the year. In addition they may well require sight of a council tax bill at a land address with your name on it.

This is I suspect, because planning permission for the marina was granted on specific condition that no liveaboards are accepted, and the owners fear enforcement action, not that there is any fundamental objection to liveaboards in the marinas other than from the local councils.

I do find this interesting, as I say up "north" even though marinas don't have residential berths many allow liveaboards and some positively encourage it.  Then I can think of one marina in the midlands where I was firmly told by the management there are no liveaboards when there clearly are, so they are turning a discreet blind eye whilst claiming to maintain the rules.  Further south it appears the practice is strictly verboten.  It's not surprising, given the pressure on housing in the south, but I do wonder where the cut off point is ie where, geographically, does the hard line take effect.

[MtB]

On 16/07/2017 at 10:28, Neil2 said:

I do find this interesting, as I say up "north" even though marinas don't have residential berths many allow liveaboards and some positively encourage it.  Then I can think of one marina in the midlands where I was firmly told by the management there are no liveaboards when there clearly are, so they are turning a discreet blind eye whilst claiming to maintain the rules.  Further south it appears the practice is strictly verboten.  It's not surprising, given the pressure on housing in the south, but I do wonder where the cut off point is ie where, geographically, does the hard line take effect.

 

I don't think there is a geographical 'cut off point'. As you come further down south you are more and more likely to be picking recently built marinas where planning permission constraints have been applied.

If you march into a marina and announce you want a liveaboard mooring down here the immediate hought occurring to the manager will be "is this a bloke from the council planning dept investigating a complaint about liveaboards in my marina, in contravention of my planning consent?" rather than Oh goody, a new customer. So when they don't know you from Adam the answer is bound to be "no sorry sir, we don't allow liveaboards here". They'd be idiots to say anything else.

If on the other hand, you took a leisure mooring in one of these marinas that obviously have liveaboards in, and kept your head down, took the boat out for long periods, didn't fill the place with yapping dogs and screaming children, junk on the roof etc, (you know the picture), then you would probably be happily accepted. 

[OldGoat]

1 hour ago, Heffalump said:

My thoughts entirely, our only secondary concern then would be three trips to Bicester a week, but even then we aren't so far away.

Now I just need to broach the idea with the local marinas to see how receptive they are, I've never been any good at that!

Methinks you may be making a problem where one doesn't exist.

Many / most marinas prevent 365 days per year living aboard because of Council Tax liability. That's avoided by going out for "a couple of days". Others make it a bit more onerous by saying "xx weeks". What does your marina say in its Ts and Cs??

Rather than making a complex meal of it, consider the above. Provided you keep yourselves to yourselves (not stuff on the side, no untidy topsides) then many marinas seem happy to let sleeping dogs lie - subject to my first comment.

 

Or have I missed the point?

[MtB]

On 16/07/2017 at 11:20, OldGoat said:

Methinks you may be making a problem where one doesn't exist.

Many / most marinas prevent 365 days per year living aboard because of Council Tax liability. That's avoided by going out for "a couple of days". Others make it a bit more onerous by saying "xx weeks". What does your marina say in its Ts and Cs??

Rather than making a complex meal of it, consider the above. Provided you keep yourselves to yourselves (not stuff on the side, no untidy topsides) then many marinas seem happy to let sleeping dogs lie - subject to my first comment.

 

Or have I missed the point?

 

I disagree. Lots of marinas operate a strict policy of 'no liveaboards'. Calcutt for example.

On the other hand Thames and Kennet Marina is stuffed with liveaboards. I'm not sure how they 'get away' with it as other Ting Dene sites (Pyrford for example) are also strictly non liveaboard. 

I suspect even strict non-liveaboard marinas all have quite a few living aboard discretely, which is the key. Ask any of the liveaboards and they will readily trot out a plausible explanation of how they are not living aboard really, just happened to be there when you knocked. 

Once you make a mooring officially liveaboard then you WILL get the boaters with pets/children/rubbish/postal deliveries/vehicles/noise/washing lines as there is no longer any need to pretend and look like a holiday boat.

[Heffalump]

40 minutes ago, OldGoat said:

Methinks you may be making a problem where one doesn't exist.

Many / most marinas prevent 365 days per year living aboard because of Council Tax liability. That's avoided by going out for "a couple of days". Others make it a bit more onerous by saying "xx weeks". What does your marina say in its Ts and Cs??

Rather than making a complex meal of it, consider the above. Provided you keep yourselves to yourselves (not stuff on the side, no untidy topsides) then many marinas seem happy to let sleeping dogs lie - subject to my first comment.

 

Or have I missed the point?

You could be quite right!

One of the marinas in mind states this:

Quote

7.2 Any moorer found in practice to be “residential” for even part of a year when this was not agreed in advance will be required to vacate his/her mooring within

Note that "within" is the end of the paragraph... well written T&Cs!

Which does seem to read that they might let you stay on the boat on the mooring every now and then.  I might pop along this afternoon to enquire about a fortnight every 5 months, we're going to pop up to Whilton later to browse longingly.

[MtB]

On 16/07/2017 at 12:04, Heffalump said:

You could be quite right!

One of the marinas in mind states this:

Note that "within" is the end of the paragraph... well written T&Cs!

Which does seem to read that they might let you stay on the boat on the mooring every now and then.  I might pop along this afternoon to enquire about a fortnight every 5 months, we're going to pop up to Whilton later to browse longingly.

 

While you are there, do enquire about liveaboard moorings too. They certainly have private moorings, dunno if they accept up-front liveaboards. Under-the-radar liveaboards might be acceptable though.

[OldGoat]

1 hour ago, Heffalump said:

You could be quite right!

One of the marinas in mind states this:

Note that "within" is the end of the paragraph... well written T&Cs!

Which does seem to read that they might let you stay on the boat on the mooring every now and then.  I might pop along this afternoon to enquire about a fortnight every 5 months, we're going to pop up to Whilton later to browse longingly.

Shows you how out of date I am. As more and more folks are taking to the water to live, I guess the marinas are tightening up their rules - again primarily to ward off the Local Authorities. Thanks for pointing that out.

[ditchcrawler]

4 hours ago, MHS said:

I can't see that causing the marina a problem. 

I assume you're planning to get to Brackley by car. If so, you have a good range of canals to explore. You're not that far away from work, even if you cruised up to Braunston and round to Stoke Bruerne and Milton Keynes. You are basically circling Brackley. 

I have a friend who continuously cruised and worked, He moved his boat every day or so, only a short distance so he could walk back to the car and move it to the new mooring spot so not more than say 3 miles at a time. I don't see why you have to spend 2 weeks in the marina if you dont want to. I thought the cruising clock reset when you returned, so surly one night would suffice.

2 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

I disagree. Lots of marinas operate a strict policy of 'no liveaboards'. Calcutt for example.

 

Do they, one of the members on here lived there on his boat for a while, maybe its how they define Liveaboard, he may have gone home at weekends.

[MtB]

On 16/07/2017 at 13:58, ditchcrawler said:

Do they, one of the members on here lived there on his boat for a while, maybe its how they define Liveaboard, he may have gone home at weekends.

 

Dunno about now but when I had a mooring in there I was read the riot act about not living aboard before they accepted me as a moorer. ISTR they wanted sight of my council tax bill at the house too but I'm not certain about that.

When I was there I used to keep a weather eye open for liveaboards and I only ever spotted about four in the marina pools. 

Their moorings outside on-line seem to have different rules though.

[Muddy Ditch Rich]

21 hours ago, Chewbacka said:

Back in about 2012 CRT issued a guide note and it included a bit about Ghost moorings - a ghost mooring is one you never use, say in a much cheaper area of the country - I don't know if CRT have changed their stance on this as a result of various court cases but this is what they said - 

"If we never observe your boat on the mooring you’ve declared, or we see you repeatedly on the towpath in an area distant from the declared mooring, we will contact you and ask you to confirm your mooring status.  We may use powers under the data protection legislation to ask the mooring operator to confirm that you do hold the mooring you’ve declared.  But either way, if you never use the mooring, it amounts to a false declaration which makes the licence invalid.  We are just starting to apply this approach where a ‘ghost’ mooring is suspected."

So you may wish to check with them to see if their stance has changed before paying for a mooring you never use.

I spat my tea out when I read that. 

Its a blatant lie, no one has made any declaration to use their mooring, only that it is available for use.