CaRT's enforcement letters

Following a request under the Freedom of Information Act, Canal & River Trust has published most of the pro forma enforcement letters mentioned in its controversial ‘enforcement flowchart' (Be concerned!), writes Allan Richards.

However, CaRT refused to provide three letters stating that they are still in draft form and it may take up to six weeks to publish them.

Enforcement flowchart

Following narrowboatworld's revelation concerning the existence of an ‘enforcement flowchart', this was quickly published by the Trust. However, it was thought useful for boaters, that the letters mentioned in the flowchart were also made available, such that those under enforcement know whereabouts in the process they are.

To this end a request was made to the trust on 27th June for copies of all the enforcement letters with the Trust replying on 24th July to say that most of them had now been published on its website.

Three missing letters

Whilst most of the letters are now in the public domain, CaRT initially refused to publish three others. It stated:

‘In relation to the pro forma letters R6, SNLB and R12, I am refusing your request for copies of these letters as they are currently in draft form and it is our intention to publish them on our website once they have been finalised, which we anticipate will be within the next six weeks. We have decided not to release the draft letters to you at this stage as we believe it is likely to lead to confusion for our customers if changes are made to the letters and it leads to more than one version of the letter being available online'.

SNLB

Quite understandably, CaRT has been requested to confirm that it has never issued any boater with an R6,R12 or SNLB letter.

This appears to have secured the immediate publication of R6 and R12 leaving just SNLB unpublished.

.... and what is SNLB?

SNLB is the letter that CaRT send a boater if, after reviewing the grant of a six or twelve month restricted licence, they decide to continue the enforcement process.

You could not make it up!

Details of CaRT's enforcement process, together with the ‘enforcement flowchart' and letters (except SNLB) can be found at:

https://canalrivertrust.org.uk/boating/licensing/enforcement/cc-monitoring-process