Meantime

No, a hose pipe ban is a hose pipe ban regardless of how much money you have to waste, or whether you have a meter or not. The only people allowed to waste water in this country and they do it on a vast scale are the water companies themselves!

And you would think wrongly. During a hosepipe ban it is not illegal to water your plants, or even wash your car, you just cannot use a hose to do so. You must use a watering can to water plants, there is no distinction on the type of plant, and also a bucket to wash your car, although such use might be frowned upon, it is not illegal. When it comes to watering plants, it is far better to do so in the evening when the plants get a chance to have a drink before the sun evaporates it.

I never thought of MM as an Eco Environmentalist

Yes a hosepipe ban is the banning of the use of a hosepipe for certain non essential functions, NOT an outright ban on using hosepipes. 1. Watering the garden 2. Washing your car. 3. Filling or maintaining an ornamental pond or water feature. 4. Filling or maintaining a domestic swimming pool or paddling pool. 5. Cleaning the outside of your house. I would imagine filling a boat tank for the purposes of drinking or washing yourself would be totally exempt from any hose pipe ban. Although exempt or not using a hose pipe to wash your boat should be frowned upon regardless during a drought. I guess one or two hire yards this year already seem to be conserving water by not washing boats.

Around Chelmsford the need to rewild / save money has led to knee high tinder dry conditions right next door to houses with the obvious inherent risk that brings.

It depends largely on whether they still own or lease the site, but someone would still have to pay business rates. Unoccupied business premises are still liable to business rates, which would be paid either by the freeholder, or alternatively by the leaseholder if they have been leased out. It is one of the reasons why one of the first things developers will do if they are planning to redevelop a site is to clear it. Generally they do not need planning permission to demolish a commercial building and they stop paying business rates. They can then take their time seeking planning permission for whatever they intend to build and the pressure is on the local authority to encourage redevelopment to get some form of revenue coming back in either in the form of council tax or business rates. Fortunately for the pub goers amongst us, May 23rd 2017 is an important date when the law was changed to protect pubs. You now need planning permission to demolish a pub or change it's use to another class of business premises such as a Maccy D's or convenience store. This helped to stop the indiscriminate purchase of pubs by developers who would demolish them and then worry about how they were going to develop the site. It doesn't mean that pubs cannot be redeveloped, but it is a more costly process and subject to a lot more scrutiny. It can also be very costly to ignore the law as CTLX found out when they ordered the demolition of The Carlton Tavern in West London. They were hit with an order to do a brick by brick rebuild of the pub which saw it reopen again in April 2021.

That is a rather bold unsubstantiated accusation, unless you have proof?

It can be found here

Whilst that may be the standard terms and conditions, let us remind ourselves of the fact that it is an offence under the Byelaws to keep, let for hire or use a vessel in the navigation unless there is in force in relation to the vessel a policy of insurance that complies with Schedule 3 of The Broads Act 2009. Each owner has to declare that they have such an insurance policy in place at the time they toll their boat. Schedule 3 para 1 states that a policy is required that shall insure the owner of the vessel and such other person, persons or classes of persons as is or are authorised by the owner to have control of the vessel, in respect of any liability which may be incurred by the owner, or any other such person, resulting from the presence of the vessel in the navigation area or on adjacent waters, in respect of death of, or bodily injury to, any person or any damage to property. Since the above is effectively enshrined in law, I think it would supersede any Ts and Cs of a hire company.

They will however blur your house out if you contact them and say you do not want the image used. Most of the pictures on this forum including the holiday tales section would fall foul of the law if property and or model release forms were needed. The big distinctions are a reasonable expectation to privacy. A 6 foot fence around your front garden would give you this, whereas no fence or a 2 foot fence wouldn't, followed by whether you intend to publish for commercial or non commercial gain. I would suggest in the case of non commercial gain, if someone asked politely to remove their picture most people would.

If an accident is caused by someone's negligence it would be their vessels insurance, hired or private, that would be expected to pay out, and if they were found to be uninsured, then it would be your own vessels insurance. In addition if negligence can be proven there may well be a criminal prosecution, one reason why you MUST inform the BA if there is a personal injury or serious damage to property or any other vessel.

I think the big differentiator here is whether it is taken for Commercial, or non - Commercial reasons. Since the database was not published commercially then model or property release forms would not apply. Something that Dave would need to consider should he decide to make the database pay by introducing a subscription, which I'm in no way suggesting should be the case.

In the United Kingdom there are no laws forbidding photography of private property from a public place. However the test of reasonable right to privacy exists which would determine whether the photographer was trespassing or taking extra measures such as using steps to look over a high fence. Since a photographer generally has full rights of the images they also have the right to publish them without permission from the people in the images unless there has been a breach of privacy, were taken whilst trespassing or a breach of duty such as sharing confidential information.

My understanding is that when a boat leaves the Broads the reg number becomes available, but is not immediately reused. If the boat returns to the Broads and it is identified as being previously on the Broads and the number is still available, it will get the same number, so that would indicate that either the original number has been used elsewhere, or it wasn't known when the boat was re-registered on the Broads. Worth contacting the BA though if you think it is available and really want to change it back.

There is no right to privacy in a public place and even private land is subject to the test of how the photo was obtained. So if I pass your house and think your front garden looks nice and take a picture of it, that is fine. However if I use a pair of step ladders to look over your back garden fence and take a picture that is not fine. Drones have added a whole new dimension to that debate because they can easily access areas that one would normally consider as private.

The short answer is no in its current format. Which to go back to Grendels point is one reason why Dave will want time to think about how he is going to take it forward. Currently there are no personal details held in the database. My boat appears in the database as does the make and model which can be cross referenced to similar boats and also the current and previous name of the boat. All the information has been collected by observation and meticulous work over the years of taking pictures of boats and studying the history of builders etc. What it does not contain is my name, phone number, address, how much I paid for the boat, whether it has a valid BSS or toll etc. all of which would make it a totally different tool and subject to data protection laws.

A hirer like a privateer is not exempt from the Byelaws, which are clear on the matter. Both parties should stop as soon as possible and exchange details. If the incident is of a serious nature you should contact the BA as well. It would also be interesting to see figures for the number of claims made either way! Whilst I don't doubt that private boats hit other boats, private or hire, I suspect this is one area where the dreaded CDW doesn't work out so well for hire yards. A private boat hits a hire boat and apologises to the people on board the hire boat who brush it off with "Don't worry mate, we've paid our CDW so we won't have to pay for it or lose our deposit"

That's why you need to look around and take details of the witnesses!

Noooo don't bring me back into it, I'm staying out of this discussion now.

Chuffin! eck! all this fuss over one word.

You can boil an egg without cracking it, until you want to eat it off course!

Too be honest I was struggling to work out why he felt the need to asterisk out the word bigger, most of them seem to be bigger than my boat these days.

I don't think there was any suggestion it is acceptable. Indeed if you read the whole paragraph in full, not just the bit you quoted, I took it as a warning against anyone doing so, which I fully realise any snowflakes here might also chose to take offence at.

Part of the problem is it is often a condition of the policy that you do not accept responsibility or apologise even if the accident was your fault. I can imagine it's very difficult not to apologise at the scene if it's your fault and especially if the other party is understandably upset. Standing their and not taking the blame is only likely to infuriate the aggrieved party further. Then they go home and read the policy and what they were meant to do in the event of an accident and fill in their claim form accordingly. I had someone hit my parked car in a hotel car park. I saw it happen but was to far away to stop them before they hit my car. They gave me their details and apologised and then some months later the insurance company for the third party denied the van had even been in the hotel car park. That was until I produced two bit of paper, one with the drivers personal details written down by him, and the other with his companies details on headed paper, and the final thing was footage from my dashcam as I left the hotel where his van was clearly visible. Needless to say they settled immediately after that. Read your insurance policy BEFORE you need it, especially the section on what to do in the event of an accident. I know it's hard, but remember you are not meant to admit liability, and try and bear that in mind if your are the aggrieved party. I mentioned before the missing item was reporting it to the BA. They can often help because they will record the details officially which could then help your insurance claim, if the other party denies it later.

I think the forum is all the richer for a broader range of posters with different backgrounds and experience in different fields, whether that be someone with a lifetimes experience of running hire yards, someone with an interest in legal matters through to the light hearted who post jokes or provide entertainment by recounting their holiday tales. It is not an achievement to deter any of them from posting. Let the moderators decide what should or shouldn't be posted and let them decide who needs to be deterred from posting on the forum. The rest of us can just chose to skip over posts, or posters we don't agree with.