I've been reading the small print as well as the large print, and have noted a few interesting items in the Future of Licensing Report, writes Andrew Bailes.
These seem to be predicated on an approach being made by CRT to Government to request new powers. Powers which if gifted would be unique among charities and a potential minefield for 'customers' who have no recourse to Freedom of Information requests or, as Lord Hunt of Kings Heath put it in the glory days of 2011 and the Lords enquiry into the establishment of CRT: “to the accountability, reporting and FOI requirements” which are incumbent upon all State-run institutions.
Anyway, onto the larger print. The document deals in the main with issues of Congestion and (implied) overstaying of the 14 Day Rule. In other words, a whole lot of nothing new. While observing that "only five per cent of those responding to our survey mentioned congestion as an issue" and that "in 2024, the most recent date for which data are available, overall satisfaction was 93 per cent for hire boaters compared with 46 per cent for other boaters" the Commission still went lock stock and barrel for the imposition of fines and movement requirements over which BW/CRT have been tying themselves in knots since time immemorial (or 1995, take your pick).
Fines Not Charges
An early paragraph states that "the Trust should have the civil power to levy fines on licence holders in response to breaches of its licence terms and conditions [...] if a fine remains unpaid for over 21 days, the Trust should have the power to tow a boat away". OK, but what are these 'breaches' and how will they be decided upon? "We suspect the Trust’s ability to influence behaviour in desirable directions would be enhanced if it had civil powers giving it the ability to levy graduated fines for breaches of licence terms and conditions" thus evading at one fell swoop the need to legislate for specific 'breaches': one merely sends out a Terms and Conditions email explaining that these have changed, and hopes that every boater reads it and abides by these decisions.
Privatisation of Enforcement
"The fines would probably need to be collected by an external agency, with non-payment resulting in non-renewal of a licence. Precedents have already been set in the Trust’s commercial moorings business and by fines levied in relation to breaches of mooring restrictions around the Olympic Park during the London Olympics." Because, and bear with me here, an individual Bailiff or Debt Collection company has never once been known to prioritise profit over their "main objective [...] to discourage wrongful behaviour". This would tie in nicely with the increasingly privatised provision of services— rubbish and Elsan points now or in the near future belonging to marinas, boatyards or (somewhat hopefully) to boater-run organisations. Then again, perhaps Capita could run both waste and water and licence enforcement. They've done ever so well with all their other outsourced Government contracts.
Ankle Tags For Wayward Boats
This is all jolly good fun so far, but I'm sure you'll agree that the fun has to stop somewhere and someone has to take responsibility, which brings me to a more baffling suggestion. "We recommend the Trust should have the right to fit a tracking device to any vessel where there is clear evidence of a failure to comply with movement requirements, particularly in congested areas. Boaters should also be given the right, but not the obligation, to install a Trust-approved tracking device on their boat to provide evidence of compliance."
Wow! This one might be worth picking apart a little, although it may be vanishingly unlikely to ever be picked up on. So, you have been found to be breaking the Terms and Conditions of your licence. A CRT employee (no, probably an outsourced chap-in-black-with-bodycam-and-pepper-spray) boards your vessel with a tracker. You let him aboard (he has pepper spray, dammit) and he, I don't know what, cable-ties a widget to your tiller? Hides a whatsit in your bilge? no, he electro-magnets it to your hull, then locks off the electro-magnet. Take that, freedom! Because otherwise, well, off goes the tracker with Fido, or on the back of your bike, or with Keith who's going to Cambridge Folk Fest, or oops! into the Capita-serviced waste bin and off your 'boat' goes by road, rail or four little feet gathering data for the Capita-enforced Licence Regulator.
Back To Where We Started, or 50 Flocs Away
So, having done one's level best to take the whole thing seriously, let's skip to the end and Annex 5, aptly the last 600 words of the document. It is here that the whole leaky edifice begins to ship so much nonsense as to be utterly awash. Although the Commission have the good sense to avoid specific recommendations about 'bona-fide navigation' (not bona-Fido, I dealt with that in the paragraph above) they can't resist having another poke at the corpse in an annex, and lo and behold, tis musty and stale still. On the fun side, though, they do introduce the 'floc'.
"There are no markers to show flocs on towpaths or riverbanks. But they can be found on the Trust’s interactive map. They are currently used by the Trust to record boat locations and monitor movement and can be viewed on individual boater accounts. Many boaters should therefore already be aware of them. Using them for a new requirement would therefore build on existing practice. By two complete flocs, we mean that if you start anywhere on floc one you need to move through at least the next two floc lengths to moor in floc four or beyond. The movement would always be more than two kilometres, depending on where in a floc length you start or finish and where a mooring space can be found." This last being somewhat of an issue, as boats of a feather often floc together.
So, with two complete flocs clarified, onto the Big Fifty: "at some point during the licence period a boater must have reached a point at least 50 flocs from their position at the start of the period. This is not the same as saying that at the end of the period the boat must be located 50 flocs away from its position at the beginning of the period. That is unlikely to be practical for many boaters. Though it would introduce a degree of complexity, a boater should not be able to satisfy the requirement by navigating for 11 hours or so during one day to reach a point 50 flocs away and then return the next day to a point close to the starting point. That would not meet the objectives of sharing mooring space and making use of the wider waterways." Right, so how would they fix this flocing problem? Suggestion came there none...
So, short of every boat being fitted with a GPS tracker, would the flocing solution only apply to those fined for being in breach of their licence? Where's the flocing fairness in that? And what about a floc that includes, for instance, a flight. Who is going to judge if a flight itself is floc-worthy or whether a floc is a floc regardless of its flight? But before you think "floc it, another bunch of CRT money wasted" remember this last vital point, made in reference to the Charity's existing powers: "The byelaws include provisions which, for example, make it illegal to swear in the vicinity of a canal."
Apologies for the great length of my piece, I hope that 'fair use' will cover my extensive quotation—after all, we paid for the bleeding thing!
Note: A floc—To quote the Commission "Every waterway is notionally divided into one-kilometre lengths or flocs identified by two letters denoting the waterway followed by three letters denoting the specific kilometre length.