Illegal or not

Taking the claim on the sign at face value - that the moorings are on 'private' owned land [which could only legitimately refer to offside bank] - then CaRT would be entitled to set whatever charges they wished upon whatever conditions they wished, whether reasonable or not. Apart from the nonsense about "taking possession" of an offending boat, they are entitled under s.8(5) to remove the boat to another part of the waterway so that it no longer obstructs the mooring referred to.

If the sign was wrong, and referred simply to a designated length of towpath, then the whole thing would be illegitimate. It would be important to know which was the real situation before getting up in arms.

So a storm in a teacup then.

There needs to be a mechanism to prevent boats mooring in the wrong place, which would include private pay-for moorings. Otherwise it just becomes a free for all. Those of us with houses wouldn't be too pleased to come home and find some random stranger had parked their car on our front lawn and gone in holiday for 2 weeks, I didn't see the difference.

Now I'll agree that CRT should act within the law but one also has to bear in mind that this sort of signage has only deemed to have become necessary due to the bad behaviour of boaters - a small minority of whom think that rules and considerate behaviour are the domain of someone else. Do you really want to emasculate CRT to the point that everyone is moored up on lock landings, services, water points, temporarily vacant residential moorings, private offside land etc? Although CRT may have powers under section 8 and bylaws, in reality there are a lot of boaters who, given half a chance, would abuse the system and thus scare tactics are better value for the licence-payer's money than piecemeal enforcement.

Did it coincide with signage for the mooring being changed from "CRT Long Term" to a branded "Waterside Moorings" location.

I think all of the (non transferable) CRT moorings are now under the "Waterside Moorings" website but I was just thinking perhaps as new signs were being put up anyway they could add this bit?

If no one has a problem with people using their moorings then its an irrelevant "non issue" anyway aka it doesn't matter. Is this also something to do with people subletting moorings perhaps ?
Overly officious signage is a nuisance but there are a lot of more serious things happening.

I think its possible that CRT want Waterside Moorings to look like an organised and aggressive organisation, rather than targeting a specific problem.

In my view, the sign is essentially prohibitive - restricting mooring to holders of a mooring agreement only.  Mooring is not offered to others.  It is hard to see how any valid contract for these charges can thus be formed with anyone other than the holder of a mooring agreement.  There have been many private parking cases thrown out by the courts on a similar basis.

District Enforcement was the outfit first used by the Environment Agency on Thames moorings.  They were soon replaced, but DE continued to use the Environment Agency logo on their parking website for many months, presumably to boost their credibility.  It took several letters to the EA before the logo was ordered to be removed.  They do not now operate the EA scheme but it still figures prominently on the "Moorings Enforcement' section of their website.

Perhaps the perceived benefit here for DE is a 'prestigious' association with the Trust and we shall eventually see the CRT logo plastered over their website.  Perhaps they have even paid CRT for the 'privilege' rather than relying on the (unlikely) collection of these penalty charges.

But the sign probably works to deter most unauthorised mooring!