I’m not clear exactly what is being agreed with, Anthony, but the rest is something with which I believe most of us would concurr. I’ll pick up your point re: use involving “a bit of both” in the context of -
“To cite 'future commercial use' of the canals, is wrong headed. to repeat my self, there is more than adequate room for both”
I agree with the both of you. Our argument is not that there is not ‘room for both’ commercial and pleasure or even residential use of the waterways, it is over the placement of this particular scheme within the ‘turning circle’ of the 3-way entry into Thames, Brent and Soaphouse Creek. They are all public rights of navigation and anything that interferes with the use of them affects both commercial and pleasure craft.
The pontoons and “lead-in structure” actually protrude across the entrance to Soaphouse Creek. That affects private pleasure craft use in and out of the ‘creek’ rather than commercial carriage up and down the main channel, but it remains a matter of concern as it affects the manoeuvring area within the entry point between Thames and Brent even more than if the pontoons etc had been kept immediately behind the creek entry.
It needs to be recognised - which is not immediately apparent from current BW pronouncements - that the danger to future commercial use was specifically addressed by the expert originally employed by BW to examine the safety implications of moorings at this location. In fact the latest assessment of that expert following discussion with BW was that his previous assessment [that the proposed moorings risks were NOT “As Low As Reasonably Possible”] could be set aside, solely on the grounds that the APPLICANTS’ own ”Risk Assessment” claimed that commercial traffic was NOT going to happen. This was backed by BW London, who have been providing ever changing rationales for denigrating freight use of Brentford’s waterways!
Once again, it needs to be kept in mind that he was not suggesting that commercial use by large barge trains was incompatible with such a mooring scheme – he had stated initially that, located as the scheme was at the river’s entrance, it created an unacceptable risk even without heavy freight traffic. He would have agreed with you that there was room for both – IF the location had been moved back to the middle of this length rather than at the junction with the Thames.