What is Your Address If You Live on a Boat?

Q.

I am new to this, so if you can bear with me! I was wondering, if you live full time on a canal boat how do you pay for your waterway licence as you don't have an address only a mooring?

Organisations like banks and HMRC also need an address for communications, sorry if it seems a daft question. Also do you pay council tax if you live on a boat? I am guessing that you'd still be using some of the local authority services like refuse sites, emergency services and so on.

A.

The question of how you can receive post as a liveaboard is common concern for those considering life on the water. Fortunately living on board a canal boat doesn’t mean sacrificing your vital postal link to dry land.

Type of Mooring

The options available in establishing an address and receiving post are largely dependent on the type of mooring you have. Generally this divides into two main categories; whether you have a permanent residential mooring or class yourself as a ‘continuous cruiser’, which means you are always on the move, never staying in one location for very long.

Residential Mooring Benefits

Naturally, the postal needs of liveaboards with a fixed location are much easier to accommodate. Aside from basic facilities such as gas, sewerage and electricity, the cost of keeping residential mooring will typically entitle residents to that other essential requirement of modern living – an address.

Residential moorings will usually allow post to be sent under the resident’s name to their main office, where it can be picked up. Some might even offer their tenants their own post box beside their vessel.

One way of finding out if your mooring is officially recognised as a permanent address is to consult the electoral role. If it isn’t listed then you could have it added.

Continuous Cruiser Concerns

The subject of maintaining a postal address only really becomes more complicated when you don’t have a residential mooring, and live the more nomadic lifestyle of the continuous cruiser.

As they are not allowed to stay in one spot for more than 14 days – according to the British Waterways guidelines – and must keep moving on down the waterways, this naturally makes maintaining a postal address difficult. The main options open are to rent your own ‘PO Box’ or use an accommodation address service.

Companies operate accommodation address services whereby they receive your post and forward it on to any address that you supply them with. Such an address could, for instance, be a local post office in an area you are travelling through.

Of course using the address of a temporary post facility may be frowned upon by a bank or for use on legal documentation such as a passport or driving licence for example. One other solution that would get round this problem would be to use the address of a friend or family member.

Council Tax

Although continuous cruisers face a bigger headache keeping track of their mail, they do at least have the upper hand where council tax is concerned.

In having no official residence they are not liable for council tax. The official word is that they should pay if their boat is their main residence, but in practice only boaters with a permanent mooring – and a permanent address – are expected to pay up. Currently they are within Band A, the lowest band.