IT APPEARS that the focus of Canal & River Trust (CaRT) currently, is a major review of the licensing, charging and managing of the thousand plus boating related businesses within its bailiwick, writes Orph Mable.
To this end, Susie Mercer, (CaRT Senior Business Boating Manager) distributed a consultation document in June 2013 to all us boating businesses.
Five weeks
Our comments were requested to be returned by 31st July 2013. I actually received mine by email on the 18th June. That gave me a little over five weeks to study, digest, consider the implications and formulate a response.
Now five weeks would seem ample time to respond to such a consultation document. Then consider the period that this consultation is required to be completed (June and July). These are two of the three ‘summer' months. By far the most busy time of year for all boating businesses! I may be being a bit cynical but I wonder if this was a deliberate tactic of Ms Mercer to minimise the response numbers.
A consultation progress report was issued by CaRT at the end of August ( I received mine on Friday 30th August by email) and it would appear to confirm my thoughts on the naivety of organising a consultation when those that are most affected would find it difficult to respond.
1107 'customers'
The Progress Report states that 1107 CaRT ‘customers' who hold any form of business licence plus five external organisations that represent operators in this sector. It is then reported that a total of 113 responses were received. That is a response rate of only 11%! Just maybe, the timing of the consultation is reflected in this response rate.
The Progress Report details that CaRT, having carried out initial analysis of this number of responses there are three areas of greatest concern.
- Price increases in the Day Hire sector.
- Price increases in the Holiday Hire sector.
- The proposed qualifying criteria for the Community Boat Licence.
This will not surprise any reader of narrowboatworld as all three points have been discussed in various articles and emails recently.
Raise operating costs
There is nothing like obvious price increases to raise comment and the proposals by CaRT, if carried out, would raise operating costs to all hire fleets and day-boat operators at a time when both are struggling. The changes to the Community Boat Licence could be seen as anti-competitive now that CaRT is a ‘charity' and seriously concerns those that operate ‘charity' boats. We await the outcome of this consultation with great trepidation.