BW has just released a consultation document explaining its rationale behind the previously threatened licence hikes to make good its deficits.
The download URL is :-
http://www.britishwaterways.co.uk/images/bw_licence_fee_consultation_oct_07.pdf
The document implies that the amount boaters pay is not negotiable during these consultations and the only thing not cast in tablets of stone is the details of how the increases are applied.
Read the document and give us (contact chairman) and BW your opinions.
Keep smiling, it is only money!
Also, it appears DEFRA are getting more money in the Comprehensive Spending Review but how much, if any, will go to navigations I have yet to learn.
To: The Chief Executive, British Waterways
From: The Chairman of the National Association of Boat Owners
Date: 12th October 2007
Dear Robin
Just as British Waterways has a statutory duty to conduct a public consultation on licence fees, I, as chairman of one of the representative groups most affected, feel it is my duty to give my first response.
I don't think there is any doubt that the private boat owner will feel singled out, victimised and let down by these proposals - if they are in fact proposals, rather than fait accompli. The consultation document clearly states that BW intends to raise an extra £5 million from private pleasure craft licences and that the only advice it will take into account in this consultation is how to extract this sum.
I say 'singled out' because hire boat operators are not expected to contribute, and, although mentioned as a 'proposal' (No 3 in the document), this intention is already a fait accompli. To justify this exclusion you mention a decline in the hire business and the competition with cheap flights. I would also add another factor – a decline in the standard of the product, not through the fault of the operators, but what their customers face when they have left the hire base. Your Annual Report this year omits figures for improvements in the waterways, e.g. new moorings and facilities. Is this because BW is ashamed of them or is it because facilities are being lost as fast than they are being built?
I say 'victimised' because the document trundles out the familiar argument that BW is obliged by Government to act in a commercial manner. Boat owners see little evidence that this commercialism is being applied to other users. In section 4.2 of the consultation, BW shows it has heard all the arguments that we have been putting forward over the years, and perhaps even understood them. Are we to regard this understanding as an achievement on our part? No, it is not an achievement until BW takes these arguments into account. To add insult to injury the section ends with a paragraph to advocate alternatives to private ownership, which smacks of 'put up or sell up'.
I say 'let down' because boaters, most of them private owners, fought hard on BW's behalf to bring its plight into the public eye and raise its political profile. Their reward for this is a stab in the back. Although BW took great care to avoid being seen to orchestrate the campaign, the mention of a '30% over three years' licence increase to 'passionate user groups' in August 2006 was obviously intended as a motivator but now turns out to be a stick that BW is going to beat us with anyway.
I dare say you have tried multiplying the number of private licensed boats on your waters by their average value and realised that private investment in the 'integral part of your product' runs to over twice the value of BW's own assets. Let me help: from length band figures your External Relations Department gave me last Spring, I calculate that there are about 1,130,000 feet of private boats on your waters. Boat builders have been quoting over £1000 per foot for many years now. Individuals therefore have made a huge, but in many cases barely afforded, collective investment in the waterways over the years and will be severely disappointed to see the value of their investment under further threat because BW continues to regard boat owners as a milk cow.
I can easily see a working family, with a boat just used in school holidays but languishing on a mooring for the rest of the year, saying, 'We bought this boat to use properly in the future when the kids leave home and we retire. If licences are up 30% or more by that time, diesel twice the price and highest bidders have hiked the mooring prices, I doubt we will be able to afford to keep it till then so might as well cut our losses and sell it now'. So it is not just the 10 - 15% on fixed incomes now that are in danger of being priced off the waterways. This could be the last straw for many more.
BW must consult properly with private boaters as to how it justifies how much they should contribute towards rectifying the shortfall.
Yours sincerely
Stuart Sampson