New laws could change boaters' age-old right to live on the canal in Milton Keynes

The National Bargee Travellers Association (NBTA), which represents itinerant boat dwellers living on the UK’s waterways, is raising the alarm as the Canal & River Trust (CRT) announces a new review of boat licensing which could see the end of the itinerant boating community.

Last month CRT unveiled a document pressing for changes in the law to address the “problem” of this community. It states itinerant dwellers have “created challenges” for the Trust from both an “operational, financial and reputational” perspective.

As a result, the Trust is launching an independently-led commission to seek changes to current laws that have enshrined people’s to live a travelling life on the water ever since canals were constructed in the 1700s.

The National Bargee Travellers Association (NBTA) is deeply concerned these changes could affect the lifestyle of bargees all over the country.

Their spokesperson said: “For CRT to speak so openly and brazenly about its hostility towards the very existence of our community is a deeply worrying escalation.

They added: “It appears that CRT aims to remove our community and replace us with more profitable alternatives. If recent history is any indication, these options will likely include chargeable towpath moorings for leisure boats, business moorings, and selling off public land to private developers.”

Currently, the rights of itinerant boaters to live on the waterways are underpinned by Section 17(3)(c)(ii) of the 1995 British Waterways Act, which states a vessel may be licensed without a permanent mooring as long as it is “used bona fide for navigation” and bargees do not remaid continously in one place for 14 days.

But CRT’s argument is that 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.

Instead, they 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, they claim.

The NBTA disputes this. Their spokesperson said: “The CRT thinks we are a nuisance, a burden and an embarrassment, and they want to get rid of us by finding methods for circumventing legislation designed to prevent discrimination. All this from a charitable trust, funded in part by public money, entrusted with a public asset...

“Itinerant boaters still pay a licence fee in navigate the waterways and the majority of boats are moored in private marinas for much of the year, where they pay mooring fees. “

The NBTA says the community’s presence on the canal is “vital”.

“Not only do itinerant boaters provide a draw to the canals…they also form a line of defence for this much loved public space against the creep of privatisation. In many less-populated parts of the network, CRT has sold off what was once public land in a financially illiterate bid to plug funding gaps,” said the spokesperson.

“If they are allowed to remove the itinerant boaters that keep the towpath and the cut as genuinely public space, be assured that these green corridors will increasingly be lost to private developers.”

The commission will begin shortly and run until September.