Terms & Conditions climbdown

FOLLOWING condemnation by the National Association of Boat Owners (NABO), the Canal & River Trust (CaRT) has made a partial climb-down regarding revised boat licence Terms & Conditions, writes Allan Richards.

CaRT had intended to introduce its new Terms & Conditions without formal consultation (NABO slams CaRT's T&C's), but the Trust has modified or removed no less than six of its revisions in an unsigned ‘Explanatory Note'.

Changed or removed

CaRT has changed its ‘Definition of a Home Mooring', ‘Joint and Several Liability', ‘Recovery of Reasonable Costs' and ‘Notice for Accessing Boats'.

It has made major changes to ‘Data Protection' removing one clause (7.9) and amending another (7.10).

Furthermore, it has removed clause 10 which would have allowed it to vary its Terms & Conditions during the licence period.

Not changed

Whilst CaRT has made significant changes in response to NABO's condemnation, it remains intransigent on the need for those without a home mooring to ‘cruise'.

Suffice to say the Trust has issued new guidelines (again unsigned) to clarify what it means by ‘cruise'. These appear to contradict a previous response it made under the Freedom of Information Act and the 1995 British Waterways Act.

It has also attempted to gloss over other issues raised by NABO as being unfair, unreasonable, unnecessary or outside its powers by asserting that they are not outside its powers and are reasonable and fully justified.

Fails

However, CaRT fails to give any legal argument. It also fails to provide any justification whatsoever, much less a full one.

Perhaps little wonder that NABO have thanked CaRT for a recent increase in membership due to boaters concerns over revised Terms & Conditions especially with regard to cruising, access to boats and data protection.

NABO's 12 paged document which includes comments on specific changes can be found here. CaRT's ‘explanatory note' can be found here.

[Whilst CaRT's explanatory note suggests it has received feedback from a number of boating organisations, only NABO and IWA are known to have published feedback. Whilst IWA's two page feedback includes ‘IWA supports CaRT's intentions to bring the Licence Terms and Conditions up to date' part of its response actually supports NABO's fuller response.]

Tomorrow, Wednesday, sees the return of normal updates to narrowboatworld.