Environment Agency charge proposals for boat registration from January 2025

Overview

The Environment Agency is the second largest navigation authority in the UK. We are responsible for managing 1,010km of inland waterways, plus Rye and Lydney harbours. It’s our job to keep these waterways open and safe for a variety of uses, but especially for boating. 

Around 26,000 boats are kept or used on the waterways we manage. It is a legal requirement for the owners to register these boats with us. We charge for registration so the people who benefit from our navigation services contribute towards the significant costs of managing and maintaining our navigable waterways. We operate and maintain approximately 2,500 assets, such as locks, weirs, and moorings. We maintain riverbanks and manage channels to ensure safe navigation. We remove boat wrecks and other debris including fallen trees.

We are committed to making sure our charges are fair and transparent. It is important that the boat registration charge continues to contribute a reasonable proportion towards the cost of the chargeable services we provide to our boating customers.

To achieve this, from January 2025, we propose to increase our boat registration charges for the River Thames, Medway navigation and Anglian waterways.

What we are consulting on

This consultation sets out our proposals from 2025 for the ‘National navigation boat charging scheme’ for these waterways. We propose to increase the ‘Environment Agency national navigation boat charging scheme’ (Boat Charging Scheme) by 9% for the River Thames, Medway navigation and Anglian waterways.  These increases will come into effect from 1 January 2025 for the River Thames and 1 April 2025 for the Medway navigation and Anglian waterways.

We also propose to use this increase for negotiations about our national joint registration agreements with Canal & River Trust (Gold Licence), Paddle UK and British Rowing.

We invite you to share your views on our proposals. 

About this consultation

Following feedback, we have corrected data in the draft national navigation boat charging schemes from 2025. We uploaded a revised version on 16 July. This is available in the supporting documentation of the ‘related’ section or in the dropdown information in question 1.  

On 6 June, we added information to the impact tables (table 4 to 13) to differentiate more clearly between the charges shown for a range of boat types and have also amended a typing error in table 4.  

This consultation includes the consultation document and supporting documentation: 

• guide to how we calculate our charges
• draft national navigation boat charging schemes from 2025

These documents are available in the 'related' section at the bottom of this page.

Why your views matter

We would like you to share your views on the proposed changes to our charges for boat registration. We welcome your feeback as it helps us to understand the impact of our proposals and make an informed decision.

Responding to the consultation

This consultation initially ran from Friday 24 May 2024 and was scheduled to close at midnight on Friday, 9 August 2024. We have extended the consultation period by one week and it will now run until midnight on 16 August 2024. We will consider all responses received by the closing date before finalising our proposals to submit for approval by government. You can view the consultation document by clicking on the relevant link in the 'related' section at the end of this page.   

Please submit your response using this online consultation tool, as it provides an easy and efficient way to respond. It will also help us to: 

•    gather all responses in one place
•    summarise responses quickly and accurately
•    reduce the cost of the consultation 

If you do not wish to respond using the online tool, you can download the response form using the relevant link in the 'related' section at the end of this page) and email the completed form using the subject header 'New charge proposals: boat registration' to enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk.   

Ask for a copy of the consultation document

Please contact us if you would like a copy of the consultation document. You can do this by contacting our:  

     National Customer Contact Centre 
     Telephone Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm: 03708 506 506  
     

We are running this consultation in accordance with the guidance set out in the government’s consultation principles.

If you have any questions or complaints about the way this consultation has been carried out, please contact consultation.enquiries@environment-agency.gov.uk.

Please click on the ‘online consultation’ link below to answer the consultation questions.

What happens next

We will take your feedback into consideration when making our final decision.  We aim to publish a response document on GOV.UK within 12 weeks of this consultation closing.