Inland Waterways Association againgst roving mooring permits

Published: Monday, 01 June 2009

THE Inland Waterways Association, in principle, is 'fully set against roving mooring permits', and seeks instead a better and more assertive enforcement of overstaying ‘fines'.

It believes the aim should be to make the enforcement of overstaying penalties a revenue generating activity for British Waterway in much the same way that this is the case for local authority managed street parking violations.

The roving mooring permits plan, was seen as a possible answer by BW to unlicenced boats, to encourage the owners to obtain permits that will allow them to moor virtually anywhere. But is seen as encouraging overstaying at the prime sites, as are those boats shown in the picture.

IWA believes that the policy should be to focus on managing designated moorings first and giving priority according to shortness of duration of stay, in order to ensure that these are freely available on a first come first served basis for causal and weekender boaters .

Given the prevalence of staff monitoring towpath matters and the availability of electronic data gathering equipment, the association believes BW should conduct fortnightly towpath checks to monitor movement of boats and track non-compliance on its central database.

Additionally, IWA request that BW considers the setting up of an integrated online ‘user friendly' complaints system available for reporting licence evasion, overstaying issues as well as all other waterway faults and non-compliance issues to fully enable the public to assist BW in this endeavour.