Revised October 2020
This policy statement sets out The Inland Waterways Association’s views on the provision of boaters’ facilities along the waterways, by navigation authorities, landowners and third parties.
1.1 Boaters staying on board their boats, whether at a mooring or navigating the system, need regular access to a number of facilities including water, refuse and sewage disposal, as well as less frequent access to additional services such as showers, laundry, electricity, fuel and places where maintenance can be carried out. Such facilities should be accessible on a suitably frequent basis, in reliable working order, and any charges for additional services should reflect the cost of their provision.
1.2 Navigation authorities are generally responsible for the provision of facilities. The UK’s largest navigation authority, Canal & River Trust, provides hundreds of water points and water-side waste disposal facilities across its 2000 miles of waterway.
1.3 IWA recommends that maintenance and renewal of boaters’ facilities should be considered as part of navigation authorities’ asset management strategy. Currently many are old and unreliable resulting in poor service for customers and high maintenance and emergency callout costs. Demands have changed. For instance:
1.4 In some locations the provision of facilities does not meet demand. One example is in London. Canal & River Trust identified in their 2016 survey of London boaters that there were insufficient facilities for the number of boaters. The survey identified a 57% increase in people living on boats in the capital since 2012, with only seven public water points, five sewage and five refuse disposal facilities to serve all of Central London’s resident and visiting boaters. IWA’s London Vision (2019) sets out the need for additional provision of facilities, over and above its national recommendations made in this policy document.
1.5 Generally there needs to be a national perspective on the provision of facilities, between one waterway area and another and even between navigation authorities, such as the well-used route from the Trent & Mersey Canal via the Bridgewater Canal (owned by Peel Holdings) onto the Leeds & Liverpool Canal.
2.1 IWA believes that there should be minimum standards for the provision of boaters’ facilities across the waterways network regardless of the navigation authority or landowner. Ideally, every waterway should have:
2.2 IWA supports the provision of new shore power mains connection charging sites to enable the recharging of both electric boats and batteries on conventionally powered boats. These should be provided as widely as possible in appropriate locations and kept up to date as technology develops. In order to ensure adequate access to all parts of the canal network by electric boats IWA has an aspiration for shore power mains connection charging sites ideally no more than 5 hours cruising apart. Each site should include between 2 and 20 sockets and where available be based on 32A 230V systems, although 16A might be all that is possible in remote locations.
2.3 Other considerations include:
3.1 Navigation authorities should maintain existing slipways (and provide additional facilities in appropriate locations) in order to encourage access by small trailable boats.
3.2 Dry docks which are owned and operated by navigation authorities should be maintained and made available for DIY work by boat owners at an appropriate cost.
4.1 Facilities provided by navigation authorities and landowners may be supplemented by those available at boatyards and marinas. IWA considers it desirable that all existing and new marinas that cater for visiting boats should provide the following facilities for such boaters:
4.2 Navigation authorities and landowners should not, however, rely on these facilities to meet the desired frequency of facilities outlined above as they are not all accessible out of hours. Where navigation authorities do rely on marina or other private facilities to meet their obligations IWA expects the following criteria to be met:
4.3 IWA supports the provision of services such as pump-outs by mobile providers using appropriate equipment on board suitable boats. This is often an additional service offered by several fuel boats which also sell solid fuels, gas and diesel, and IWA recognises the important service that such providers bring to the waterway community.
4.4 Where waterside developments including marinas and housing are proposed, the inclusion of boaters’ facilities should be encouraged. Inclusion of facilities in development plans is an alternative way to produce more facilities at potentially reduced costs. Canal & River Trust already encourages, or sometimes requires, developers to provide boaters’ facilities as part of plans to develop their sites. Examples include Loughborough Wharf, where a former British Waterways yard was developed into student accommodation and included boaters’ facilities, and Marsworth Junction where a new facilities building has been provided as part of a residential development. Such opportunities should be explored wherever appropriate, including the opportunity for shore power mains connection charging sites.
4.5 IWA encourages boatyards to retain or install equipment to allow the sale of petrol in addition to diesel, in order to encourage the use of the waterways by smaller boats with petrol outboard engines.
4.6 IWA encourages boatyards and marinas to maintain existing slipways and ensure that they are accessible at all times for use by trailable boats. New boatyards and marinas should incorporate slipways into their development plans. Information on slipway design is available here (in our Restoration Hub).
5.1 IWA believes that good access to facilities is essential and should be achieved by ensuring:
5.2 Boaters should be considerate in their use of all facilities in order to keep facilities in operation for other users.
6.1 There is a need to think strategically when considering how to meet the need for more facilities so as to fund new facilities in ways that do not necessarily require fee increases. Encouraging waterside developers to include boaters’ facilities in their projects is one way of doing this. Existing facilities should also be looked at to see how they could be improved to be more efficient. It may be that the introduction of new facilities to a site such as recycling, shore power mains connection charging sites or pump-out points would provide a more rounded service that is in demand; or that the introduction of measures to reduce vandalism and decrease breakdown response times would increase the reliability and reduce the downtime of existing facilities so that demand is better met.
Further information on topics briefly touched on here can be found in the following policy documents: