Annexes

Annex 1a: The future of boat licensing review terms of reference

(As set out in November 2024)

1. Purpose

1.1 The purpose of the Review is to consider options for potential changes to the Trust’s approach to boat licensing, to identify and evaluate alternative models for how to regulate the use of the canal network for boating that reflects the changes to its use over the past 30 years and the likely range of future uses. 1.2 These Terms of Reference set out the scope and principles of the Review to be carried out by an independently led Commission to be convened by the Trust.

2. Context

2.1. The Trust’s statutory navigation, boat licensing and enforcement functions are currently contained in a patchwork of legislation, inherited from British Waterways in 2012, including provisions from original canal enabling legislation going back hundreds of years, overlaid with a number of 20th century private and local acts of Parliament. 2.2. The use of the Trust’s waters has changed considerably in the last 30 years or so since the last Act obtained by British Waterways (in the form of the British Waterways Act 1995), which first introduced the current 2 categories of boat licence based on home mooring or continuous cruising, the latter intended to cover a small group of truly nomadic boaters who navigated continuously around the network, typically carrying and delivering goods as their predecessors had done for over 100 years, and successfully petitioned Parliament in the bill state of the 1995 Act to remove their need to obtain a home mooring. 2.3. The biggest change of use over this period has been the steadily increasing numbers of boaters licensed as continuous cruisers and use of vessels for full time residential purposes. A significant and growing number of those boats licensed as a continuous cruiser cannot reasonably be said to be genuinely navigating throughout their licence period and, instead, remain in one relatively small part of the network for most if not all of the time, to live and work in that area without obtaining a home mooring. 2.4. These vessels tend to be concentrated in areas of high demand (driven largely by the cost of home moorings or alternative accommodation in those areas and the economic opportunities available) which has created challenges for the Trust both from an operational, financial and reputational perspective. 2.5. These trends have resulted in high levels of non-compliance and consequent enforcement action which can result in the Trust removing residential boats from its waters, sometimes in difficult circumstances, creating tension between the Trust and boaters subject to enforcement action and other boaters and local stakeholders who expect the Trust to actively manage non-compliance and congestion by continuing to uphold the full requirements of the current legislation. 2.6. The current legislation predates the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010 which both have significant implications for the Trust’s boat licensing and enforcement approach, particularly in relation to continuous cruisers and residential vessels. 2.7. The current legislation does not take account of the Trust’s status as a charity with a prescribed range of charitable objects and finite resources, independent from Government ─ with declining Government funding. 2.8. In Court proceedings, judges have commented on the complexity and lack of coherence and clarity in the legislation and have urged the Trust to seek reform and consolidation. 2.9. The Trust’s boat licensing legal framework is, therefore, considered to be in need of review and reform in order to enable the Trust to adapt to the present and likely future use of its waters.

3. Principles

3.1. The Review will look at the issues created by the current framework and consider what improvements and outcomes should be sought by the Trust as well as options for reform of boat licensing and enforcement which could be taken forward within existing legislation or by seeking new legislation by the Trust in accordance with the following principles: 3.1.1. Clarity – clear and understandable for the Trust, boaters and other stakeholders. 3.1.2. Fairness – secure a balanced approach to different boater uses and navigation patterns, with boaters collectively and individually making a fair contribution to the cost of navigation operation and maintenance taking account of the varying utility and intensity of use. 3.1.3 Sustainability – reflect and cater for the long-term changes in boater use and demand, in the context of impacts on navigation, the wider local community and the environment and taking account of the Trust’s long-term financial position. 3.1.4 Effectiveness – enable the Trust to better manage its inland waterways to respond to changes in use and take proportionate and timely enforcement action more effectively and efficiently based on a broad consensus of views around the Trust’s management of its inland waterway network.

4. Approach

4.1. The Review will: 4.1.1. Approach the issues from objective and neutral perspective, bringing a fresh perspective, seeking to build and learn from experiences of other areas of regulation and reform. 4.1.2. Benefit from internal and external input from customer service, operational, legal and other expertise. 4.1.3. Be informed by evidence and data on boat licence and enforcement figures and evidence of wider socio-economic, operational and environmental factors, which drive a number of the current challenges and will inform the choices open to the Trust for reform. 4.1.4. Seek the views of boaters and other stakeholders through consultation and other forms of deliberative engagement. 4.1.5. Consider the appropriate legislative vehicle for reform and the Trust’s approach in meeting any procedural requirements such as consultation and publicity.

5. Governance

5.1 The Review will be carried out by a Commission, led by an independent chair appointed and funded by the Trust, with one appointed boater representative, likely to be an existing Council member, and one appointed Trustee, supported by a dedicated secretariat comprised of legal and boating team colleagues and others as required. 5.2 The Review will be overseen by the Board Boating Committee, and the Commission will provide regular updates to this Committee. 5.3 The Review will produce a report, with a series of recommendations endorsed by the Commission, supported by technical information produced by the Trust. 5.4 Upon completion, the Board of Trustees will receive the conclusions and recommendations from the Review and will respond to its findings, setting out any proposed legislative reforms to be sought by the Trust and any other changes that are accepted. 5.5 The Review will be carried out in an open and transparent manner subject the need to preserve a space so as not to inhibit internal discussions and the need to preserve legal privilege in respect of any legal advice provided to the Review.

6. Timing

6.1 The Commission will be convened by January 2025 and will seek to report to the Board of Trustees by September 2025.59 6.2 The Trust will seek to implement any reforms, including any required legislative changes as soon as possible after the conclusion of the Review.

Annex 1b: The Boat Licence Review Commission – note sent to the Trust on the terms of reference

The Commission met on 14th January to discuss the terms of reference which have been approved by the Board of Trustees of the Canal & River Trust (CRT).

We reviewed each section and then ratified them.

However, we did have a few observations on them which we agreed to communicate back to the Board.

These are as follows:

1. The terms of reference set out the context for the review. We noted that there will be different opinions on context; and therefore as part of our review, we will form our own opinion on context based on available data – and where there is none, seeking to understand the underlying basis for an opinion, where this is relevant to our review and whether we can find that data from other sources. As part of this review, we are interested in understanding the different perceptions and reasons for them. This will form part of our stakeholder engagement.
2. Additionally, we tabled the charitable objects of the CRT and noted the different elements of them. We did this as a way of grounding ourselves in the need to balance each of these objects in our work; and by way of acknowledging that any scenario which we conclude is worthy of recommendation to the Board must not conflict with the ability of CRT to comply with Charity Law.
3. We acknowledged that it would be easy to focus on the enforcement of licensing in our review but noted that this is subsidiary to an understanding of the wider issues created by the current framework, as you have reflected in paragraph 3.1 of the terms of reference. Our work will therefore focus on these wider issues, of which enforcement will we suspect form a part.
4. We will seek to engage a wide range of stakeholders to help us understand the issues about licensing for each group, the ways in which we could evaluate any potential change which mitigates those issues and options which we would recommend to the Board. If any one or more option is favoured by the Board, it can then consult on it in the usual way. We will start that initial engagement early, so we are informed by it as we commence our evaluation assessment. Andrew Cowan, Sir Chris Kelly, Penny Barber

Annex 2: Key information sources for the report

Boat numbers:

National Boat Count 2025 Summary - August 2025

Boat movement:

Annual Lockage Report - January 2025

Boater satisfaction

Annual Boaters Survey Report 2025 - July 2025 Hire Boat Survey Response Summary - November 2024 Trust Better Boating Plan - 2025

Liveaboard Numbers & Provision

Boater Census Survey Report - 2022 Boater Census Report - Challenges & Issues - 2022 Association of Inland Navigation Authorities (AINA) Report on Residential Use of Inland Waterways - February 2011

Cost of Boating

Trust Boat Licence Fee Calculator - October 2025 Boat Licence Consultation Report - March 2023

Expenditure on Boating

Boater Report - 2024

Boat Licence Terms & Conditions

Boat Licence Application Forum - October 2025 Trust General Terms & Conditions for Boat Licences - October 2025

Movement Expectations

Trust Guidance for Boaters Without a Home Mooring - October 2025 Trust Equality Policy Statement for Customer Service Delivery - March 2023 Equality Act Reasonable Adjustments Questionnaire - October 2025

Annex 3: Available licence types issued by the Trust and current leisure pricing

Available licence types (2024-25)60

1. 1 day Tees
2. 1 week
3. 1 week Tees
4. 1 month
5. 1 month Tees
6. 3 months
7. 3 months Tees
8. 30 day exp
9. 6 months
10. 6 months Tees
11. Leisure 12 months
12. Tees Barrage 12 months
13. Tees Barrage special 12M
14. Gold Leisure
15. Gold Business Holiday Hire
16. Gold Skippered hotel boat
17. Gold Business roving trader
18. BB Cadet
19. BB Fixed location
20. BB Holiday hire
21. BB Day hire
22. BB Maintenance Work boat
23. BB Roving trader
24. BB Rowing
25. BB Skippered hotel boat
26. BB Skippered Passenger
27. BB Static letting
28. BB Trade Plates

Current Leisure Licence Pricing (2024-25)

Annex 4: The charitable objects of the Canal & River Trust

To preserve, protect, operate and manage Inland Waterways for public benefit

• For navigation
• For walking on towpaths
• For recreation or other leisure-time pursuits of the public in the interest of their health and social welfare; To protect and conserve for public benefit objects and buildings and archaeological, architectural, engineering or historic interest in the vicinity of or otherwise associated with the Inland Waterways; To further for the public benefit the conservation, protection and improvement of the natural environment and landscape of Inland Waterways; To promote, facilitate, undertake and assist in, for public benefit, the restoration and improvement of Inland Waterways; To promote and facilitate for public benefit awareness, learning and education about inland waterways, their history, development, use, operation and cultural heritage by all appropriate means including the provision of museums; To promote sustainable development in the vicinity of any inland waterway for the benefit of the public, in particular by:
• The improvement of the conditions of life in socially and economically disadvantaged communities in such vicinity
• The promotion of sustainable means of achieving growth and regeneration and the prudent use of natural resources; and To further any purpose which is exclusively charitable under the law of England and Wales connected with the Inland Waterways; Provided that in each case where the Trust undertakes work in relation to property which it does not own or hold in trust any private benefit to the owner of the property is merely incidental.

Annex 5: Illustration of a possible alternative movement requirement

1. The new movement requirement needs to be an improvement on the existing requirement. It will need to:

• (a) Meet the objectives set out in paragraph 47 of the main report;
• (b) Be easier to understand, and
• (c) Focused in a practical way on helping waterways users to share bank and pontoon space.

2. It would have to cover obligations relating to:

• i. The frequency of movement. We have recommended that the current requirement to move every 14 days, or as is reasonable in the circumstances (for example to allow for unplanned navigation stoppages), should be retained. We have also recommended that 14 days should be defined as inclusive.
• ii. The distance of movement after 14 days. A 14-day rule by itself is not enough. It needs to be accompanied by a clear definition of how far a boat should move after 14 days have elapsed. The minimum distance should be set to be long enough to support the objective of sharing mooring space fairly, but no longer than that. Compliance ought then to be reasonably practical. The easy availability of tows over short distances would mean that an engine or other breakdown would not usually be acceptable as a reason for staying in place for a longer period than 14 days. If a boat ends the movement in a position which is the minimum distance away from the start point, it would not matter if there were diversions to allow for practicalities like accessing water points and sewage disposal facilities.
• iii. The minimum distance to be covered over the duration of a licence. A minimum distance within the licence period of an appropriate size would be a further factor helping to share mooring space. It would also encourage wider use of the waterways.

3. An appropriate combination of these three factors would make it much easier for boaters to understand their obligations than the present notion of bona fide navigation, would remove the need to monitor more complex movement patterns and would make it unnecessary to get into the legal technicalities of determining whether the new mooring space is in “another place”. A major advantage of a set minimum distance requirement is that it would be unambiguous.
4. There is a risk that these arrangements could be undermined by pairs or groups of boaters deciding to travel back and forth over the same areas every 14 days, effectively swapping mooring spaces, thereby undermining the objective of freeing up access. We think that risk could be mitigated by making the required distance for movement after 14 days far enough. If swapping of this kind did materialise on a significant scale, the arrangements might need to be rethought and the advantage of simplifying the movement requirement would be lost.

An example 5. By way of illustration, an example of an approach combining a relatively short fortnightly requirement with a longer licence period requirement would be:

• i. A minimum movement requirement of two complete functional locations (flocs) at least once a fortnight in any direction. Every waterway is notionally divided into one-kilometre lengths or flocs identified by two letters denoting the waterway followed by three letters denoting the specific kilometre length. There are no markers to show flocs on towpaths or riverbanks. But they can be found on the Trust’s interactive map.61 They are currently used by the Trust to record boat locations and monitor movement62 and can be viewed on individual boater accounts. Many boaters should therefore already be aware of them. Using them for a new requirement would therefore build on existing practice. By two complete flocs, we mean that if you start anywhere on floc one you need to move through at least the next two floc lengths to moor in floc four or beyond. The movement would always be more than 2 kilometres, depending on where in a floc length you start or finish and where a mooring space can be found. Anyone who was unable or unwilling to identify flocs could still be confident of satisfying the requirement by moving at least 3.1 kilometres from their starting point. This would usually involve not much more than an hour’s navigating, even if a lock or lift bridge was encountered on the way. It would also be a short enough distance to expect it to be possible for a boat to be towed if it had broken down.
• ii. A distance covered within the licence period of at least 50 kilometres from their starting point. By this we mean that at some point during the licence period a boater must have reached a point at least 50 flocs from their position at the start of the period. This is not the same as saying that at the end of the period the boat must be located 50 flocs away from its position at the beginning of the period. That is unlikely to be practical for many boaters. Though it would introduce a degree of complexity, a boater should not be able to satisfy the requirement by navigating for 11 hours or so during one day to reach a point 50 flocs away and then return the next day to a point close to the starting point. That would not meet the objectives of sharing mooring space and making use of the wider waterways. 50 kilometres is 31 miles. It would therefore require travelling further than is implied by the widely held but erroneous view that the present rules require movement of at least 20 miles from the starting point during the licence period. Our choice of a distance greater than 20 miles is deliberate.63 The same distance requirement of 50 flocs from the starting point applies within all licence periods up to and including one year i.e. three months, six months and one year. If any three-year licences are issued, 50 flocs would be an annual requirement.

6. It would be possible to add to these two requirements incentives to use less visited parts of the waterway, for example by offering a discount on the subsequent year’s licence fee if a boater was able to demonstrate that they had travelled particularly extensively over the network during the year.

59 It was subsequently agreed that the report would be delivered by November 2025, to give the Commission more time to produce it.

60 Note that ‘BB’ stands for ‘business boating’.

61 https://canalrivertrust.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapTools/index.html?appid=b46e3e0bda4a44a0be267df7674139a5

62 How we monitor boat movement

63 By way of comparison, the Trust estimates that 25 per cent of boats without home moorings currently move less than 20 kilometres in a year. 50 per cent move more than 50 kilometres.