Mooring Auctions – and how to push more boaters into continuous cruising

MOST boaters were opposed to the BW (now CRT) mooring auction system from the start. It would, they argued push up prices, benefit only the richer boaters and make the types of mooring in shortest supply simply unaffordable for most.

The British Waterways argument was that they were obliged by Government to go to auctions to demonstrate they were not abusing their near-monopoly position and, in any event, none of that would happen and many moorings might go down in price as well as up.

We are now in the Canal & River Trust era and the moorings auction system seems to be going badly off the rails.
I have observed the site closely over the last couple of years and there are clear trends which are disturbing both for the future income of the Trust and the financial well-being of boaters.

Let’s start with so-called reserve prices – always excused as the price “ below which it would not be economic for us to let the mooring”.

If the object, as originally claimed, was to establish a proper market for moorings then reserve prices would genuinely reflect the cost of supply them – that is the price of installing a few rings and, if you are really lucky, a tap, spread over many years. It would be a few quid, certainly mo more than £100 or so.

That never was the reality but at least there was some potential for getting a cheap mooring. In recent months reserve prices have soared. Take a current example of a 62ft towpath side mooring on the Leeds and Liverpool near Chorley with no facilities at all except rings.

The guide price for the mooring is £1,300 and the reserve price is just £130 less at £1,170. The same pattern is repeated across the country and must I suspect be related to the transfer of mooring auctions from the boating part of CRT to the property and commercial arm where greed has always been much more important than boaters, canals or any other consideration – the ethos of the estate agent rules.

That is clearly a distortion of the market process and that distortion continues when, predictably, the mooring does not sell and it is offered for sale on a ‘Buy it Now’ basis. The price at which it is then offered is not the reserve price but the higher guide price.

My checks on the site indicate that rather than moorings being allowed to go more cheaply during a depressed market they are going unsold instead, depriving the Trust of income and forcing more and more poorer boaters into a form of continuous cruising.

The situation is exacerbated, of course, where moorings or a type of mooring is in short supply, such as London, the Kennet and Avon or residential mooring almost anywhere.

More do get bought but at prices artificially inflated by scarcity, so it is not a problem for well-heeled boaters but the substantial proportion with small incomes cannot compete and are driven out or forced to find another solution.

We have met several Londoners who boat for a hobby but cannot afford London mooring prices. They, quite legally, place their boat on a 14 day mooring in a popular spot with good train connections; leave it there for two weeks to move it to the next place on a subsequent visit.

So all those popular moorings where holiday boaters can’t stop because they are full are likely to be occupied, at least in part by other hobby boats rather than liveaboards.

The RBOA are calling for more, cheap, online, residential moorings in places like London and the K&A but that will not solve anything if those moorings are also part of the current, distorted, mooring auction system which discriminates in favour of the wealthiest boaters.

In fact, the system is so badly misaligned that it has even meant CRT losing out on the most in-demand moorings. Residential moorings for a 62ft boat on the Engine Arm in Birmingham, where there is electricity, water and other facilities are simply not selling because they are too expensive. Currently the guide price is £2,176 and the reserve price £1,741. One is currently up for the guide price as a ‘Buy it Now’ and another is in the auction system. On past form both could stand empty costing CRT thousands of pounds instead of bringing in a lower, more reasonable income – bearing in mind we are looking at Birmingham industrial areas rather than London and the South East.

CRT Head of Boating, Sally Ash, who is no longer responsible for the mooring auctions, claims that one reason for the introduction of the system was because waiting lists were too difficult and expensive to manage.

I would suggest they are neither and are certainly a better way of assuring a steady income stream than auctions which leave berths empty for long periods of time, bringing in no income whatsoever.

CRTs estate agents now running the system have forced up reserve prices to ludicrous levels, distorting and destroying any claim that it represents a truly free market. The only freedom is for mooring prices to rise where the sites are most desirable, there is no scope for them falling in poorer areas and the result is yet more empty spaces.

Empty spaces also mean more reluctant continuous cruisers, taking their chances with the rules, more frustrated hobby boaters and a deteriorating situation across the country.

It is not as if the system actually achieves true market pricing, not only because of the high reserves set but also because prices on an individual mooring site fluctuate madly, vacancy by vacancy. If you get two determined, well-off boaters bidding the guide price can double but a few weeks later, with only one person interested they only pay the inflated reserve. The result is a ludicrous disparity on the same stretch of moorings.

The Trust no longer needs worry about being competing unfairly with its mooring sites as it is no longer a Quango and could easily revert to a waiting list system.

Despite the concerns of Sally Ash it is fairly simple to operate an electronic waiting list system that is fair to all, doesn’t distort prices and gives all boaters a chance of buying a mooring they can afford.

There are already established prices for all mooring sites. Boaters can be invited to join the waiting list for up to a certain number of sites in one area. Once they come to the top of the list and there’s a vacancy they are told electronically and by post and have a set time to accept. If they decline it goes to the next in line and if there is no current demand it can be advertised.

Sites where demand is non-existent can lower their prices until the CRT is getting at least some income and prices can be adjusted to deal with more than just supply and demand.

If there is an areas with an overcrowding problem on busy visitor moorings, holding nearby long term moorings at a lower price may well result in an improvement. Mooring prices then become a tool of CRT policy rather than a failing commercial attempt to exploit boaters to the greatest extent possible.

Mooring auctions are already a failing experiment. The time has come for them to go.

How does the IWA survive in this new canal world?

I have been chatting today with some old IWA hands - founder members of key branches and participants in the early campaign cruises.
Without exception these pioneers think the current leadership has gone soft.
"They don't campaign any more, they think sitting on a committee is enough," said one veteran.
"The leadership is now mostly well heeled people with posh boats who can afford high fees and charges, they are out of touch with people like us who can't even afford BWs mooring charges these days," explained another.
This generation can't understand why the IWA is accepting the under-funded stitch-up of the new charity and want them, instead to be fighting the rumoured closures of canals like the Huddersfield Narrow and the Rochdale.
But they are not optimistic. "I can see the rich middle class boaters now leading the IWA taking the plum voluntary roles in the new charity and supervising the same failed ex B W bosses as they continue to starve the system of investment and put up charges to boaters," said one disillusion lady.
It is easy to see an unholy alliance between the IWAs shiny boaters and BWs greedy bosses being passed off as some brave new third sector organisation we should all support so that government can abandon all responsibility for the waterways.
Alternatively the once fiesty, fighting IWA could get its balls re-attached.

IWA analysis is almost right

No one could be more surprised that the The Inland Waterways Association (IWA), which is not known these days for being hard-hitting has issued its initial response to Defra’s consultation document on the Government’s proposals and they broadly agree with me.

Charity fund-raising is not enough to keep our system going

Boats and boaters should come first and the IWA says that navigation 'as a defining influence on how the charity is operated, is too weak throughout'.

As we all know there is not enough money and the IWA says up front that the figures don't stack up and that the system will be some £15- £45 million p.a. short of what is required. 

It also says that the EA rivers must come into the system cleanly and on time and that the new body shouldn't have fewer obligations in relation to commercial, cruiseway and remainder waterways - they want them all to have a chance of survival.

Unfortunately it doesn't quite have the balls to say that it is ridiculous that the new charity - likely to be underfunded and underpowered - should be obliged to maintain the rich lifestyles of the current BW senior directors, as well as their pensions.

New charity for the waterways

I've just read the entire Defra consultation document on the new waterways charity (http://www.defra.gov.uk/consult/2011/03/30/waterways-1103/) and it looks as if the coming together of a number of vested interests will hand our national waterways over to a bunch of official do-gooders.
The IWA has believed for years that it can run the waterways better than BW and this government claims it needs to off-load the cost of running our canals and rivers and desperately needs at least one 'civil society' organisation to its name that works, at least for a year or two.
The BW bosses want to hang on to their pay, perks and pensions and it looks as if the new charity will have to keep employing them on exactly the same terms - so that is a £1m hole in the budget just to keep the three top men.
The forgotten people here are the boaters who use the canals and rivers and make them interesting and attractive. We will get canals with less money spent on them - just £39m a year for the new charity and no index linking.
We will be faced with bossy volunteers who know little or nothing about boats, or canals for that matter, and will revel in their new role and we will still have the pleasure of paying even more to keep BWs bosses in clover as licences go up above inflation and the concept of paying for casual mooring, initially through fines, is crept in by the likes of BWs 'head of boating'. Note that Evans and company keep all their pay perks and pensions under the new body - that's £1m a year spent before we start.
You can guarantee all the skilled BW staff will have been given the elbow and replaced by volunteers who certainly wont be there on wet and cold days in February when a paddle is broken.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a publicly funded body caring for a part of our national heritage - only political dogma declares otherwise - and we should be fighting to keep a properly public funded BW rather than trying to make the best we can of the political lash-up called the New Waterways Charity.