Boating Groups Have Their Say

As the Canal & River Trust’s boat licensing review gets underway in a series of discussions with national boating groups, we asked for their thoughts on the way forward

A 50 PERCENT PREMIUM for widebeam boats, a major increase in the distance ‘continuous cruisers’ are expected to cruise (backed up by higher fees for those that don’t), and a commitment to no differential regional pricing are all among the suggestions put forward by national boating organisations in the first stage of a potentially major shake-up of the Canal & River Trust’s boat licensing system.

Launched by the trust on the grounds that the current system has been largely unchanged in over 20 years and “often cited by boat owners as being complex and out of date”, the review aims to “ask boaters the fairest and simplest way to split the important financial contribution made by the different types of boats and boaters” to running the canals.

Although the trust mentioned a number of possibilities – such as different fees based on the type of boat, area of the waterways system or mooring – it was stressed that these would need to come from the boaters and their organisations, not from CRT.

The first stage of the process is therefore for Involve, an independent charity specialising in public participation and appointed by CRT, to contact representatives of a number of national boaters’ organisations to ask them their views on how the consultation should work and what it should cover.

Canal Boat got in touch with a number of these groups and asked for their thoughts on the subject. As one might expect, there were some widely differing viewpoints…

The National Association of Boat Owners, representing all boat owners, took the view that licensing should take account of the width of boats as well as the length, but that at the same time it should be greatly simplified – with perhaps six price bands representing three length ranges (rather than 18 now) and two widths, boats over 2.25m (approx 7ft 4in) paying 50 percent more.