New Year resolution

Mark Tizard, general secretary of the National Association of Boat Owners (NABO), comments on some more topical issues.

I HAVE had canal boats for 30 years and our current boat was a culmination of ideas gained through experience and a substantial financial investment.

This winter we have experienced sizeable costs: new batteries, licence renewal, marina fees, blacking, BSS and a hull survey to be booked. Together these will exceed £5000 before we leave the marina. This has led to some serious soul-searching as to whether we are getting value for money. Or has the time come to sell the boat and seek our enjoyment elsewhere, especially as we are now retired?

A few years ago being in this dilemma would have been unthinkable, but now it’s a real consideration. We still enjoy our boating but there is a feeling that things have changed. Walkers, cyclists all seem to have a greater priority in the Canal & River Trust’s thinking than boaters; this may just be a perception driven by CRT’s desire to be all things to all people too.

Over the last couple of years infrastructure failures and lack of water have curtailed our cruising and we have noticed there seems to be an increase of those living on boats as if they are on land with less respect for the canals and their environment.

Facilities continue to be removed and not replaced and the repair of the Toddbrook reservoir will no doubt be very expensive and divert funds from dredging and general maintenance. But it’s not all gloom and doom; I cannot imagine anything surpassing the enjoyment obtained from an early morning cruise on the cut, then mooring in splendid isolation. However costs could well increase further, with the proposed removal of red diesel and CRT’s need to increase income through licensing, so we may well be having this conversation next year.

I have looked at the brief manifestos of the boaters’ representatives which are all broadly similar; the common theme is the need for improving the availability of facilities.

Hopefully you will have or will be using your vote, although many have said to me it’s largely a PR exercise to tick a governance box. This I suspect is true given that private boaters are such a small voice – four out of 50 members.

However NABO believes boaters need to get their views across whenever they can and this is why we are supporting Helen Hutt, the current NABO treasurer and a liveaboard boater. The elephant in the room not mentioned by the majority of candidates is: will CRT get its grant renewed? How will boaters be affected if it isn’t?

Getting CRT to engage and communicate with boaters to make boat owners realise the likely implications of not getting the grant is a key requirement of any candidate.

Hopefully boaters’ representatives can seek to influence the trustees and make them realise that they need to use boaters as a pressure group to support CRT in its negotiations with government.

Chatting with some boating colleagues we wondered whether CRT is missing a trick in not fully embracing the increasing focus on the environment? This could be done by moving its emphasis from being a wellness charity to a broader and more focused environmental charity. Of which wellness forms an important part alongside conservation, environmental development and protection.

Of all the charities CRT is in a prime position to be carbon negative, increasing the use of solar, electric vehicles, workboats, water transportation, tree planting, wildlife conservation, no single-use plastics, etc., etc. It’s already doing much of this but could capture the mood of the nation by promoting this further.