In a meeting between NBTA and Canal & River Trust (CRT) in May 2024, CRT informed us that it would be carrying out a major restructuring of its licence support [ie enforcement] and welfare teams to separate welfare from enforcement. CRT has been consulting with staff and unions with a view to implementing the new structure this August.
Matthew Aymes, CRT’s Customer Support Manager: Licence Support informed the NBTA that changes would be made to the operating model and structure of Boat Licence Customer Support, Boat Licensing, and Welfare Teams with the aim of “improving efficiency, closing gaps between teams that cause case delays, and better differentiation between work streams”. He stated that CRT is facing a higher enforcement caseload, financial challenges, and an increase in unlicensed boats, so it needed to work “more efficiently”.
Mr Aymes gave a detailed explanation of the proposed new structure. He said that the licence support [ie enforcement] officers’ role had increased to include welfare and in consequence, the role had developed beyond its design, which in CRT’s view is causing missed opportunities to progress cases and cases are dragging on for too long.
The key difference is that there will be a clearer divide between welfare and enforcement. All current cases where there is an Equality Act reasonable adjustment or the boater is flagged as vulnerable will be taken out of enforcement and dealt with only by the new welfare team.
Two welfare officers will be retained and a senior welfare/ safeguarding officer post created who will work with the Legal Team and Matthew Aymes, liaising with local authority safeguarding services where needed. The welfare team will include two welfare administrators whose role will include helping with forms and welfare benefits paperwork, to free up the welfare officers to spend more time visiting boaters.
In addition, a new role of complex case officer is planned, who will be a single point of contact and coordination for “difficult” cases where external bodies are involved such as the police, local authorities, planning department, and other CRT departments such as moorings managers. This role will work closely with the welfare and other teams.
The bigger change will be to the licence support officer role. The job title will cease, and the existing team will move to a case manager structure, leading to “a more clearly defined separation between enforcement cases and welfare or support cases”. The case managers will visit boaters and could signpost them regarding welfare benefits, but their main role will be to progress cases and maintain communication between the boater and CRT. Each case manager will own cases from start to finish, rather than enforcement cases being passed between licence support officers in different areas when a boater moves area. CRT will also increasing the number of supervisors (previously licence support supervisors).
CRT claims that it needs to have better engagement with enforcement cases than currently, because staff are stretched, and can miss communications coming in and thus miss opportunities to resolve cases. There will be a centralised structure so where caseloads are higher this can be made more even with the aim of progressing and clearing cases faster. At present, enforcement cases are not shared between different regions.
The rangers who log boats will still be in a separate team with the same role, and the current frequency of boat sightings will continue. The Legal Team will also remain separate. Mr Aymes claimed that if a case is referred to the legal team, it will be spotted and paused before legal involvement.
We asked Mr Aymes whether CRT expected to increase or reduce enforcement. He stated that the enforcement process itself would remain the same, apart from the timescales; that the objective was to resolve more cases and remove fewer boats, and achieve a better resolution of cases before they get to the Section 8 stage, because staff would have more time to engage with the boater and understand the circumstances. He claimed that enforcement would not progress cases to the Section 8 stage faster and that the new structure would not make the removal of a boat faster or slower.
We raised the issue that advice from licence support officers is increasingly inconsistent and confusing. Mr Aymes stated that “under the new structure, everyone will be in the same room so decisions will be more consistent. Enforcement has to be done case by case, not by algorithm, we will sometimes get it wrong. A potential restricted licence list gets generated by computer. Then it is sent to the licence support officers for the area to check. There will be areas of the country where the workload means they are not looking at this in detail. The new structure will reduce the number of times we get it wrong. I looked at a case last week and asked why have we restricted this one? Answer: the information was in the wrong place”.
We also raised the issue of overstays being accepted at the time and later used against the boater at licence renewal. Mr Aymes claimed that this should not happen if the boater stuck to the time they informed CRT about, and that closer case management in the new structure would reduce such inconsistencies.
So, what does this mean for boaters? It has to be said that the majority of CRT’s enforcement activity is directed against boaters without a home mooring and that the underlying cause of the enforcement workload is CRT’s draconian, punitive and unlawful interpretation of Section 17 (3) (c) (ii) of the British Waterways Act 1995. If CRT was to enforce the law as Parliament intended, using the 14-day limit in any one place as the test for compliance, the workload would be considerably reduced.
It is clearly good news for the large numbers of disabled, elderly and vulnerable boaters who have needlessly faced enforcement action because CRT has not known they have a disability, or because they have been unaware of their rights under the Equality Act 2010. These boaters will no longer be faced with the threat of losing of their home because their disability means they cannot comply with CRT’s increasingly restrictive enforcement policy.
We are not convinced that able-bodied boaters will benefit from the changes. Matthew Aymes stated both that the timescales of enforcement would change and also that cases would not progress to the Section 8 stage faster or more slowly. He stressed that the changes were due to the need to work more “efficiently”. However, we find it hard to see how working more efficiently and taking welfare cases out of enforcement leaving fewer enforcement cases will not mean that cases will reach the Section 8 stage more quickly.
On the other hand, if the changes are being driven by the need to cut costs, taking a liveaboard boater to court is likely to cost around £2,000 to £5,000 for each Section 8 case. If you live on your boat, your rights under Articles 6 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights mean that you are entitled to have the proportionality of removing your home assessed by an independent court. This means that it is in CRT’s financial interest to resolve cases without going to court. Unfortunately this may mean boaters being put under even more pressure to take moorings that they cannot lawfully live on, that are unaffordable, or that are already full up. The NBTA will be watching closely to see how these changes impact the itinerant liveaboard community.