Six hours not six weeks

FOLLOWING the narrowboatworld article, CaRT's enforcement letters, yesterday, it took Canal & River Trust just six hours to publish its SNLB letter, writes Allan Richards.

The Trust had previously refused to provide it, claiming that it was in draft format and might take up to six week to finalise.

SNLB

The SNLB letter is the final stage of the enforcement process and is accompanied by statutory Section 8 and 13 notices requiring the boat to be removed from CaRT's waterways. Failure to comply with the notices leads CaRT to instruct its solicitors, Shoosmiths, to issue formal legal proceedings.

Never issued

Responding to a query, CaRT have stated categorically that, under the new enforcement regime, they have never provided a boater with a SNLB letter (and, by implication, never issued section 8/13 notices or commenced legal proceedings!).

Despite initially claiming in its response to a Freedom of Information Act request made on 27th June that all the letters except three were already in the public domain, CaRT now admit that they did not start publishing the information until 13th July, over two weeks after the request was made.

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

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