Alternative payment structures
There are plenty of people ready to propose alternative structures for the payments which marinas have to pay to CaRT for the privilege of connecting their marinas to the canal network. Without this agreement, anyone mooring their boat in the marina would have nowhere to go, writes Mike Todd.
Of course, it is possible to devise many other schemes and there was a detailed consultation with the industry at the time the present one was introduced. However, any new arrangement has to pass several tests:
Raise same amount
Firstly, it must be revenue-neutral. That is it should raise the same amount, in general terms, as the present formula otherwise it represents a shift of responsibility from the marina owners to licence payers. Paul Lillie has made it clear that he believes that the income should come from somewhere other than the marinas—this is a much stronger demand than simply suggesting that there could be a fairer distribution.
Secondly, like any charging system, it has to be easy to administer and to encourage the least number of opportunities to 'beat the system'. The design and layout of a marina is pretty much fixed and easy to check. Marinas also publish their rate card and the current system needs nothing more than a calculator to multiply the two together. Any scheme that depends on occupancy rates will be very much more expensive to administer, both for CaRT and the marina. More significantly it invites manipulation.
Who checks?
If it depends on actually counting boats on specific dates, who does it and who checks? Or should it be based on contracts? It is easy to imagine the more evasive marina offering all its moorers a free day's mooring on the relevant day!
Assuming that CaRT needs to maintain its level of income from marina connection charges, then all that will happen is that the rate per mooring unit will be increased to offset the reduced number of units by a factor that represents the likely vacancy levels. Overall, the net revenue to CaRT (in the end that means all of us who use the canal network in one way or another) is reduced because the cost of administration is higher.
'Hard cases make bad law' is a principle for which there is plenty of evidence. In this case we have one failing marina owner, perhaps abetted by another known for wanting a monopolistic market, who are arguing that there could be a fairer system. In fact, what he wants is for other people to pay his costs for him.