The infamous Boat Safety Scheme (BSS) continued to cause unnecessary stress, inconvenience and expense for boat owners.

Following their false start introducing the scheme, British Waterways and the Environment Agency refused to compensate oat owners who paid for extensive work they were told must be done for their boats to pass the BSS examination – but which later turned out to be wholly unnecessary.

“We did everyting we were asked,” explained Harry Ashforth who owned a 40ft De-Groot motor cruiser. “We were told to get surveyed early so that we wouldn’t have any problems – and that’s what we did. My boat failed the examination because it has solid conductors rather than multistrand woring. And unless I changed it, BW/EA wouldn’t let me keep my boat in the river.

“Ispent more that £1,000 to have the boat completely rewired. When the examiner came back to reinspect the boat he said that the rules had changed and that solid coductors were now acceptable.”

David Allison, who was responsible for the way the BSS was introduced, said: “Mr Ashforth and the other owners now have boats which are much safer than they would otherwise have been.”

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