A floating home can be as fixed as a house – but it’s easier to move home

A look at where to moor -how to obtain a permanent mooring for your boat; where you should go to find out about moorings and how the costs can vary.

Space is not a premium these days

Supply and demand

Even just a year ago I would have advised any would-be liveaboard who wanted to stay in one area to find a mooring willing to accept them before even buying a boat. These days the position has changed somewhat, thanks to a combination of British Waterways’ successful efforts to encourage the building of more and bigger marinas, the continuing recession and uncertainty about the future of the waterways.

Until about the middle of last year those who set out to farm boats on various pieces of canalside land found their marinas filling swiftly and customers willing to pay substantial sums for leaving their boats for months at a time.

The result was that they were likely to turn their noses up at liveaboard boaters – and even if the marina owner actually wanted a proportion of residential boaters the planners were likely to turn down the idea.

Since then many more large marinas have opened whilst boat owners have begun feeling the pinch and become more likely to settle for a cheaper, bank side mooring from BW or a landowner. For leisure boaters the saving can be considerable, a thousand pounds a year or more. The result is lots of empty marina berths and plenty of opportunity to haggle.

All of which has made life a little easier for the liveaboard who wants a permanent or near permanent base and even marinas who would absolutely deny having ‘residential’ moorings somehow find space for a number of liveaboards by offering them ‘long-term’ moorings.

Signs of life aboard

How do you define a residential boat?

It is all a matter of definition, you see. Residential moorings are those with planning permission from the local authority and recognised as official locations for ‘dwellings’. British Waterways has a tiny handful of bank side residential in most of its regions, often with an electricity supply, and they are in still in such short supply that they invariably fetch well above the going rate in the notorious mooring auctions, going to those willing to pay the most ludicrous price rather than those in most need.

There are other recognised ‘residential’ berths within some marinas and often liveaboard boaters find themselves presented with a council tax bill if they are on an official ‘residential’ mooring.

If you end up in this situation take some advice from the Residential Boat Owners Association – it has fought several such cases and the current state of play, legally, seems to be that if the terms of your mooring specify that the owner of the site can move you around at will yours is not a fixed abode and therefore not liable for council tax.

Just how you define a liveaboard mooring if there is no planning permission depends on who is doing the defining.

Some marinas, British Waterways’ wholly owned marina company for one, will sell what are usually labelled Class A or Class One moorings, even premium berths, which give the boat owner the right to stay on their boat all year, or perhaps 11 months of the year. Sometimes they will include accepting your post in the price - and what a price, such berths often cost 50 per cent more than the standard berths even though they don’t have planning permission as official ‘residential’ berths.

Other marina owners take a more relaxed view in order to keep their berths occupied.

They know the value of having liveaboards on site, especially in winter when other trade falls off and will say – although not publicly – that most boat owners take their boats out cruising a few weeks of the year so they are clearly not living at the marina and if they chose to spend the rest of their time on their boat, rather than at whatever address they have for them, that is nothing to do with the marina.

Often they won’t accept boaters’ post, arguing that is proof that their customers don’t live there and have another address.

Of course they also actively encourage ‘winter moorers’ from amongst the cruising liveaboard community, who buy fuel, coal and gas as well as pay fees.

One other source of moorings is a boat club but most club moorings, won't allow liveaboards to moor - although there are exceptions. 

When is a towpath mooring a residential mooring?

Playing by the rules?

BW is equally ambivalent. In some areas such as the Grand Union south of Milton Keynes it has residential houseboat moorings, residential moorings and long-term moorings.

Even a casual passer-by can see that most of the ‘long-term’ moorings are occupied by those who live on their boats. The difference between the categories would seem to be that, if anyone complained, BW would have more chance of bringing pressure to bear on those on ‘long-term’ mooring sites. Mooring terms often say the site is not to be used by those whose boat is their main residence but such clauses are rarely enforced even where BW officials are much more hard line. On the Peak Forest canal they made a concerted attempt to force liveaboard moorers off long-term moorings, using new local terms and conditions to make life difficult, with petty rules about TV aerials.

In any event, that is not the biggest problem, especially as BW’s business gets a very healthy income from all London region mooring fees as auctions push prices up and up.

Partly as a result of rising prices in London and other major cities, with marina and residential moorings fetching anything up to £6,000 a year, there are hundreds of liveaboard moorers who opt to pay nothing at all, simply moving from one small section of canal to the next when sufficiently harassed by BW’s enforcement teams – and moving back again when the same problem crops up at the second mooring site.

It also has to be said that there are some leisure boat owners who leave their boats at visitor moorings and visit them every 14 days to move them to the next mooring rather than pay for a mooring.

Peace of mind comes with cash

In the end, for the liveaboard who needs a permanent base because of work or family commitments, it comes down to two questions – how deep are your pockets and how much stress are you willing to tolerate?

If you have the money, then life is fairly simple. You find a marina that suits your needs, or a bank side mooring for which you are willing to pay whatever it takes, and you simply pay up.

If you have the cash you can find either an official or unofficial ‘residential’ mooring where your ability to pay will shield you from any hassle and you can carry on your life afloat much as you would if you were based on land.

If you don’t have the same level resources, and a lot of liveaboards are on fixed incomes, you can opt for a somewhat more precarious location by becoming a hidden liveaboard in a tolerant marina or buying the right to a bit of bank in BW’s auctions without declaring you will live there.

You are not quite so safe as your wealthier cousin, but no boater really has security of tenure on a mooring and BW is still pursuing its campaign of herding as many boats as possible into marinas so that those in a hurry don’t have to slow down past on-line moorings.

If you are willing to live a life of stress you can take your chances as a continuous moorer, shifting just far enough to pacify BW’s enforcement officers and staying as long as their lack of staff and powers will allow. It may not be comfortable but it may also be the only option for those without the financial resources to pay-up – and it is my belief that we will see a lot more of it as the Government slashes housing benefit and more people are forced to look for the cheapest accommodation available.