ABP accused of "pricing people out of the water" by raising charges for sailors

 THE company that runs the Port of Southampton has been accused of “pricing people out of the water” by more than tripling charges for some hobby sailors.

The rises have prompted a retired Royal Navy admiral to table a question in the House of Lords, accusing Associated British Ports (ABP) of introducing swingeing price hikes “without consultation”.

Retired admiral and Labour peer Lord West of Spithead said he “couldn’t believe” the rises.

“It occurs to me they’re saying ‘We can make some cash, let’s get on with it’,” he said.

What if they decided to put it up 500 per cent? It seems they’ve got the ability to charge as much as they like and people have got no comeback.”

Invoices seen by the Daily Echo show a private owner with a boat from 8.1 metres to 12 metres in length faces a rise in their mooring licence from £225 last year to £675 this year.

Above 15 metres, the price rise is from £517 to £1,551.

Bob Gardner, honorary secretary with Southampton Water Sailing Association, said: “Everybody’s trepidatious that, having seen individual mooring holders’ costs increase by a factor of three, there’s a similar plan for the clubs.

“For the individual mooring holders, it’s just been declared with no form of consultation. Some of them have been on these moorings for 30 years or more and these aren’t rich people.

“It’s just pricing people out of the water without consultation. It feels completely against government policy on encouraging participation in sport and getting people active.”

John Hodgins, membership secretary of Marchwood Yacht Club, said: “We’ve had an invoice for mooring charges this year but we are aware that private mooring holders have seen an exponential rise this year and we're pretty sure that that sort of rise is heading in our direction as well.”

He said such rises would “threaten the viability of our clubs”.

“Marchwood Yacht Club was founded in 1963 by local people to enable the average working man to get afloat. Our members are not at the elitist end of yachting,” he said.

Terry Welsh, commodore of Cracknore Hard Sailing Club, said: “The majority of leisure users on Southampton Water are not oligarchs with multi-million pound yachts but ordinary families and individuals to whom a 200 per cent increase means they will have to vacate their moorings.”

John Bigg, who has a 27ft trimaran at Ower Lake, Calshot, will see his mooring licence go up from £225 to £675.

“I won’t be keeping this mooring if the price is going up,” he said.

ABP said in a statement: “We kept mooring fees as low as possible for as long as we could, but to mitigate increased operational and infrastructure costs, and after a number of years with little change in fees, we are unable to delay the rise in fees any longer.

“We delayed January’s fee increase by three months, giving mooring holders time to decide if they wanted to continue with their mooring. We also introduced a quarterly payment plan to spread payments, and rates remain very competitive with other local providers.