Steve Haywood wrote: > Genuine question. Where is this written down? Where is any of what we pay > for in our licence written down?
Well, first stop is the BW licence Ts & Cs, I guess, and the by-laws. But, of course, BW might decide they want to add "thou shalt only navigate the waterways while wearing a pink frilly dress" to the Ts & Cs. That doesn't mean they necessarily have any legal right to insist on it. The continuous cruising guidelines are the most famous example of this: BW says "you must do this", the CC lobbyists say "but that's not held up by the 1995 Act", BW says "well according to our dictionary it is", and so on ad infinitum. A whole chunk of the documents surrounding the latest BWAF-inspired surcharges deal with the question of whether the 95 Act permits BW to charge more to continuous cruisers. To find what BW has the legal rights to give its "customers", or to require from them, you have to look at the primary legislation - the BW Act 1995 and the Transport Act 1968 are the major ones, of course, but there are zillions of others. (I believe the 15th century River Lee Act is still at least partly in force.) Occasionally someone thinks they've found a loophole in one of the acts that allows them to do something BW don't permit - the Yardley Gobion 'Lord of the Manor' case is probably the best-known. Richard
