Has CRT the skills to work with liveaboard boaters?

It looks like the Canal and River Trust is finding the growing numbers of liveaboard boaters difficult people to handle. Other canal users and canal businesses criticise CRT for not preventing static residential boaters clogging up popular visitor moorings and creating long and messy linear moorings. Then they get flak from liveaboard groups for not providing enough facilities and residential moorings, and for their licensing policies. Now they are being criticised by a local council and online petitioners for the way they treat vulnerable residential boaters.

A number of expensive court cases have not helped their situation. In July 2013 they lost a long and expensive (6 years and  £.25M) legal battle to remove boats moored against private land on a tidal section of the Grand Union Canal. See News Report.

The Trust probably thought the courts had come to their rescue when their 2011 ‘Guidance For Boaters Without A Home Mooring’ was fully endorsed as a correct interpretation of the law by the High Court. The crucial point was that ‘short trips within the same neighbourhood, and shuttling backwards and forwards along a small part of the network, do NOT meet the legal requirement for navigation throughout the period of the licence.’ But then in July 2013 the Court of Appeal gave permission for a Judicial Review on the issue of whether the 2011 Guidance accurately sets out the powers of CRT and the restrictions on licence holders arising from Section 17 (3) (c) (ii) of the British Waterways Act 1995. The CRT Director responsible for legal services has taken the highly unusual step of publishing his witness statement in advance of the future Judicial Review. It has since been reported that he has taken early retirement and will not be directly replaced.

There are said to be a number of ‘hot spots’ for problems caused by liveaboard boaters. The CRT South East waterway team carried out a series of Boater Consultations in 2013 and came up with suggestions about how to deal with what was thought to be a problem of popular moorings being taken up mainly by liveaboard boaters. However, when questioned, CRT could provide no evidence that they had had any complaints about lack of mooring space or that liveaboards were responsible, and the whole consultation process was criticised as seriously flawed by some boater groups.

Another  ‘hot spot’ is the western end of the Kennet and Avon Canal and Bath, see our earlier news post. In July 2013 a report by the local Bath and North East Somerset Council task group looking at the needs of the estimated 1000 residential boaters in their area criticised senior CRT executives saying they ‘were disturbed both by their lack of awareness of equalities issues, and by their use of draconian powers to enforce the conditions of the licences they issue … for continuous cruising’. (However the same Council has now issued eviction notices to boat owners moored on the River Avon!)

Now that equalities issue has come back to bite CRT with over 4000 people signing an online petition against the eviction of seriously ill or infirm boaters. It calls on the Trust to ‘Stop evicting disabled, elderly and vulnerable boat dwellers, put an end to the threats of homelessness and meet your Equality Act obligations not to discriminate against people on the grounds of disability, age, pregnancy and responsibility for children.’ It cites examples of 3 boaters recently evicted by CRT despite one having schizophrenia, another being terminally ill and the third seriously ill.

Richard Parry, chief executive at Canal & River Trust, has said:  “We welcome people who choose to live on our waterways as they bring life and colour to the canals and rivers, provided that everyone observes the rules.” He claims that all potential evictions will now be personally reviewed by him.

As long as people continue to make their homes on our canals CRT will have the unwanted role of effectively being their landlord; it probably needs to start developing its social and caring skills to handle that role. Even the hallowed National Trust recently found itself being criticised for the way it treated its tenants!