Britain’s canal boat nomads fear new rules will sink their way of life
Narrowboats can moor for free on England’s increasingly crowded rivers and canals, at times alongside some of London’s most exorbitantly expensive real estate.
This is Poulton’s rhythm as a “continuous cruiser,” a booming population of nomadic boaters who live on Britain’s canals and navigable rivers without paying for a permanent mooring spot, sometimes in central London, flanked by some of Britain’s most exorbitantly expensive real estate.
They’ve been a waterway fixture for decades, a perpetual-motion village of eccentric boaters, drawn by the lifestyle or driven to it by Britain’s soaring housing costs.
But now, Poulton and others say their life afloat is under threat.
In November, the Canal and River Trust (CRT), the nonprofit organization charged with managing 2,000 miles of historic canals and rivers in England and Wales, will announce an overhaul of regulations and licensing fees that itinerant boaters fear could force them off the water.
Tensions have been rising between the managers of Britain’s canals, others who use them, and the nomadic narrowboaters, revered by some as bohemian travelers and disdained by others as maritime squatters.
“I think there’s this feeling that we’re getting away with something, that we’ve found a loophole to live cheap,” said Poulton, who spends about half of her time in the posh waterways of central London. “Yes, some people are out here because they can’t afford anything else, but many of us are out here because we love it.”
Among the changes believed to be under consideration: higher license fees, permit systems to limit the number of continuous cruisers in some areas and rules that would require them to travel more miles each year, potentially splitting them from shoreside jobs and schools where children are enrolled.
CRT said it was too early to speculate on specific recommendations that will emerge from the independent commission that is reviewing the rules. But an update of regulations and enforcement powers is desperately needed, the agency said, to meet rising demand for space throughout the 200-year-old canal network, particularly in and around London.
There are more than 8,500 nomads on the water, making up a quarter of all boats. In London, itinerant boats now outnumber by 2 to 1 those who pay thousands of pounds a year for fixed mooring spots.
The total number of licensed boats — including commercial vessels, residential boats with permanent private moorings and continuous cruisers — climbed 15 percent in the past decade, and the number of continuous cruisers more than doubled, according to CRT figures.
“When you have a finite amount of canal space you can have contentions among the users,” said Matthew Symonds, the head of CRT boating programs. “The growth has been significant in some areas.”
Other recreational boaters, those who keep their boats in marinas or private moorings but cruise the network, say nomads hog limited mooring spaces and that some flout the rule to move every fortnight. Waterfront landowners and developers bemoan dilapidated boats and, at times, unfriendly boaters.
“We’ve had more problems with it since covid and the cost-of-living crisis,” said Ian Burrows, a local government official who oversaw the recent removal of dozens of boats that had colonized a stretch of the Thames in front of Hampton Court Palace.
Andrew Hamilton, a former lockkeeper on the Thames, said asking liveaboards to move along was a constant chore.
“Some people would just stay,” Hamilton said. “The moorings would be blocked by people, some of whom were destitute and some of whom were simply bloody-minded.”
Continuous cruisers say the overcrowding complaints are overblown, and that boaters should expect London’s waterways to be as crowded as its streets are for cars, and subways are for passengers.
The cruisers have their own complaints about CRT’s management of the waterways, including a lack of affordable mooring space, inadequate or inoperable sewage pump-out stations, and riverbanks in need of dredging.
Nomads see themselves as a valid constituency, albeit one without fixed addresses. In being targeted, many say, snobbery is afoot. Or afloat.
“There’s always a bit of a conflict between scruffy boats and shiny boats,” Alain Gough-Olaya, 39, a psychiatric nurse, said aboard his not-so-shiny narrowboat on the edge of London’s Islington neighborhood, a cat winding between his legs in a cabin lined with books and cooking pots. “It often seems the CRT is saying you can’t be on the water so much because you’re the wrong sort of person.”
CRT is not trying to rid the canals of nomadic boaters, Symonds said. He agrees with those who credit a resurgence of liveaboards in the 1960s with bringing life back to canals that had become bleakly moribund after cargo transport disappeared earlier in the century.
“We love having boats of all sorts on the canals,” he said. “We just have to manage the network fairly for everyone.”
Only a minority of itinerant boaters violate the rules, Symonds acknowledged, but all add demand on the locks, pump-out stations and other canal infrastructure. Last year, CRT began imposing a 10 percent surcharge on cruisers over the yearly license fee all boaters pay. It will rise to 25 percent by 2028.
“It’s just a matter of how much you’re on the water,” Symonds said. “Continuous cruisers are always on the water.”
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