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Annual Boaters' Survey 2025 - Executive Summary

As part of our commitment to regularly listen and respond to the experience of boaters across our network, we have approached around a third of boat licensees between November 2024 & March 2025.

A few yellow flowers grow on the canal bank next to a moored narrowboat.

Background

Invitations to participate in the survey are randomly selected from the database of licensees. We kept the process consistent with previous years for comparability. Email and SMS options were used to push completion online.

There have been 1742 responses to the survey. This is in line with the strongest sample achieved to date for the Annual Boaters’ Survey, and provides a robust evidence base for the conclusions. Surveys were conducted between November 2024 and March 2025, and do not reflect any boating experiences since April 2025, when national rainfall has put greater pressure on navigation.

Key headlines

The headline KPI of overall satisfaction has seen a significant increase to 55% (+9%, 46% in 2024), which is now broadly in line with 2021-2023 results.

The main improvement since 2024 is among liveaboard boaters (liveaboard continuous cruisers up from 40% to 53% and liveaboard with home mooring up from 35% to 47%). Satisfaction among leisure boaters is more positive overall but has seen little change from 2024 levels (c.59%).

In terms of the key issues underpinning the 2024 satisfaction drop; lack of dredging, boating costs and vegetation management continue to be relatively strong negative drivers in 2025.

There are however many green shoots of recovery in sentiment compared with 2024 with a fall in negative views. General upkeep of waterways (-6%), vegetation management (-17%) and engagement with boaters (-6%) all show significant improvement. While not registering as particularly significant changes, favourability, advocacy and trust are also moving in a positive direction. 

In short, while the results compared to 2024, at face value, are positive and reflect a significant improving picture, many of the key issues identified in 2024 continue to garner comparable levels of negativity, and many of the issues being addressed through the Better Boating Plan remain key areas of priority.

A blue narrowboat crosses a small aqueduct, with the boaters looking out at the views.

Key findings

  • ‘How well waterways are dredged’ has seen little material change in negative influence, with 64%  (negative/very negative) vs 67% in 2024.
  • Boat license costs has seen no significant change, with 52% negative towards this factor compared with 54% in 2024.
  • ‘Upkeep of the waterways’ has seen a modest improvement with 39% (very poor/poor) vs 45% in 2024. However, there has been an improvement in positive ratings, up from 23% in 2024 to 30% (rating very good or excellent).
  • ‘How vegetation is managed’ has seen a significant improvement following changes to contractors - 46% in 2025 vs 63% in 2024 - but continues to be a key negative issue.  
  • ‘Communication & engagement’ - boaters views have improved regarding engagement, with those who feel the Trust do not listen to boaters falling from 57% to 51%, which may indicate our action following 2024 to establish the Better Boating Plan has helped improve dialogue.
  • Based on our new action planning monitor, 65% also agreed we are good/very good at keeping them informed - around 20% ahead of the nearest other factor ‘keeping locks operational’ (46% good/very good).

Attitudes towards the Trust have seen some modest improvement since 2024:

  • There has been no significant movement in favourability (41% vs 38% in 2024), though the direction observed is positive.
  • Advocacy towards the Trust has improved marginally, from 49% who speak negatively to 43% in 2025, but boaters remain around twice as likely to speak negatively than positively (22% speak positively).
  • Despite this, there is limited movement on overall trust; 38% compared to 41% in 2024 do not trust us to manage the network, while those that have some Trust remains the same as 2024 at 46%.

Last Edited: 16 July 2025

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