As a former civil servant, I have never underestimated the difficulty of getting government right. This applies even in respect of the Harbour Board. For years local people have been given priority in the allocation of moorings by allowing full Council Tax payers precedence over second-home owners who pay reduced Council Tax. Of course, there’s always a bit of a gap between policy and practice. For instance “local” means anyone who lives in the South Hams district, so covers people who could live miles away from the harbour, and there are people who elect to pay the full Council Tax simply to get a mooring. Equally, enforcement is never perfect (especially when no proof of Council Tax payment was required by the Harbour Board) and we are only now sweeping up the last few people who had slipped through the net.
But the enthusiastic campaign to move everyone to full Council Tax throws all this into the air. There are second-home owners who have paid their money and been waiting on the reduced-rate list, often for decades with, frankly, no chance of ever being able to get a mooring. If, at a stroke, they become equally as eligible as any other full Council Tax payer, the chances of a local resident getting a mooring suddenly slips well into the future. Will the Board have to find a way to recognise that, under the new dawn of everyone paying full Council Tax, whilst everyone is now equally local, some are more local than others?
Not only is the Harbour modernising its pontoons and facilities, but it has also moved into the electronic age, with internet payment facilities, Twitter and Facebook. The internet facility should ease the process of paying harbour invoices, like mooring fees and harbour dues: to access it, go to the Salcombe Harbour website (on SHDC’s site) and click “Pay invoice online”. You can presumably do this on your iPad even as you sail over the Bar. The Twitter feed, obviously enough, is at TWITTER @SALCOMBEHARBOUR. The Facebook page is (at the time of writing) still very scant. It will be interesting to see how these develop.
Finally, it’s good to note that there are high evening tides for the Diamond Jubilee weekend. There may be a flotilla down the Thames but South Pool will nevertheless have its own. Arrangements are in hand, plans are being drawn up, no expense is being spared, the creek will be full of boats and flags.
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