Cart hurriedly responds

AFTER dithering for months over how far a continuous cruiser should cruise to comply by the rules, Canal & River Trust, though still not stating a definite distance, at least tells us that it must be more than the 15 to 20 miles over the period of their licence.

Clear response?

On Friday, narrowboatworld revealed the Canal & River Trust (CaRT) admission that the ‘clear response' document it had assured national boating groups six weeks was being drafted, did not exist (Double U-turn for CaRT!), writes Allan Richards.

This seems to have struck home because during that evening the Trust published a hurried response to the question ‘how far should I travel to comply?'.

How far is enough?

Posting on CaRT's Boating facebook page, Damien Kemp writes:

‘Following our recent communication, a number of boaters have asked for clarification of the legal requirement to cruise throughout the period of their licence and, in particular, what is the minimum distance that should be covered in order to comply with the Trust's Guidance for Boaters without a Home Mooring.

We recognise that boaters want clarity over this. However the BW Act 1995 does not stipulate a minimum distance. It does set out the requirement to use the boat bona fide for navigation, and the Trust's Guidance is our interpretation of this requirement.

Whilst this means that we cannot set a universal minimum distance for compliance, we can advise that it is very unlikely that someone would be able to satisfy us that they have been genuinely cruising if their range of movement is less than 15-20 miles over the period of their licence. In most cases we would expect it to be greater than this.

We will be advising those boaters without a home mooring whose range of movement falls short of this distance that their movement needs to increase or we may refuse to renew their licence. Our statutory right to refuse to renew a licence arises from section 17 of the BW Act 1995 which states that we can refuse to issue a licence if we are not satisfied that a boat either has a home mooring or intends to continuously cruise'.

Far from clear?

Unfortunately, this is not the ‘clear response' needed. If the Trust wishes to use ‘range of movement' as a proxy for compliance it needs to say categorically what will satisfy it.

Saying ‘not less than 15-20 miles but probably more' is nonsense!