Applications have now closed, and we’re really pleased by the interest that's been shown in helping design a clearer, fairer licensing system for people who go boating. We’ve received an amazing 1,167 applications – thank you.
To help ensure the panel reflects a broad range of boating experiences, locations and circumstances, we used a process called sortition. This is a method of randomly selecting participants while also ensuring the final panel broadly reflects the wider boating community.
We initially planned to use newDemocracy's stratified random selection tool. However, we experienced technical issues when applying it to our dataset and, following advice from newDemocracy, used an alternative sortition tool called Panelot instead.
Panelot enabled us to select a panel of 40 volunteer boaters that met our agreed representation criteria. We used the Leximin selection method, which helps maximise opportunities for representation across different groups within the applicant pool, including smaller groups that may otherwise be less likely to be selected.
Thank you again for taking the time to apply and for your willingness to be involved in this important work.
This is part of our response to the 2025 independent Commission on Boat Licensing, which concluded that 'boat licensing needs reform to reflect the current and future use of the waterways'.
