Changes to rules on tenders

I don't know the answer to your question but I do find 'tenders' are a pain in the pass. You spot a likely looking gap in a line of boats and just as you start to pull in you spot a small row boat or canoe effectively blocking a mooring.

Or as you pass by a badly secured tender swings out into your path.

For the most part they are just used to get water or empty cassettes so the boat they are 'attached' to doesn't have to move and possibly lose their spot.

a bit preduced and one sided don't you think. I have a tender that is very useful to me. It's invaluable for getting things off my prop. Also for painting the outside of the boat above the waterline. Traditionally the wide working boats from the north had tenders that they called coggys. So just watch where your dishing out your preduces.

Well its £50 a year I believe for the BCU, but that includes your liscence and insurance.

A cunning way to save a mooring, some might say.

1971 Act Part I, s.3(1) " tender" means a pleasure boat which is used solely as the only tender to a pleasure boat in the same ownership as the tender.



The Act included these within the registration requirement as per Part II s.9(3) :-



(3) Every tender registered under this Part of this Act shall also have conspicuously painted or displayed in the same manner as a powered pleasure boat the words" Tender to " followed by the name of the pleasure boat to which it is a tender.



Schedule 3, Part I of the Act specified the charges for these :-



For every tender so marked and registered at the same time as the pleasure boat to which it is a tender ... Three-quarters of the amount of the charge which wouId be payable if the pleasure boat used as a tender were not so used.



So every tender would have to be registered as a pleasure boat, the only difference is that the charge is reduced by 25% if classified as a tender. The size only makes a difference to the level of charge, not to the classification. There is no specified limit to the size; the recent 3mtr limit is an arbitrary imposition unsupported by the legislation; the only requirements for such classification are as itemised in the above quoted s.3(1).  Once again, use of T&C’s to super-impose a differing set of criteria is beyond their remit.


Having said as much – the historic BW policy of allowing use of tenders for free, as being covered by the licence for the ‘mother ship’, was a discretionary permission in favour of boaters, which neither they nor their successor are bound by. They are entitled to demand a licence or registration certificate for a tender as for any other class of pleasure boat – only the percentage reduction applies.


Arguably perhaps, the licence regime of 1976 – as distinct from the registration scheme – does NOT include any category of tender, however the intent behind the 1971 legislation was to bring the classifications for whole system licensing into parity with the river registrations – and the 1983 Act s.4 implicitly demands that the 2 regimes use the same classifications.


If boaters wish to have a tender, they are legally obliged to licence or register it and pay the charge appropriate to its length, less 25%. They can challenge any arbitrary classification in other words, but not the obligation to pay.


As a matter of interest, the position of tenders came up in the case of BWB v Peter James. In that 2003 case, the BW practice of not issuing pleasure boat certificates to tenders was noted. As the Judgment remarked – “That is a practice which the Board is clearly entitled to adopt if it chooses, but it is not reflective of the wording of the Act.” The issue of whether or not it was a tender was found in BW's favour by the court below, but that was on the basis of the definition in the T&C's. It was an oddball case muddled by inconsistencies respecting application of the relevant Act. Nothing new there.

Well spotted, had forgotten that was where I asked for it.

except if lots of boats with a tender start being a pita then they are asking to eventually have "free" tenders cancelled and will have to pay for the privilege