St Ives Pleasure Boat Association

30/04/2025

Hi everyone, just a quick update as to what’s been happening with the boats in St Ives. We are now three weeks into the season and pretty much no further forward. The heavy handed council are still issuing fines and on one occasion, sent the police down. No new licences have been granted. The Nemo and the Seahorse are still craned out due to uncertainty and have lost their staff. The council are ignoring all emails from members of our association, St Ives Pleasure Boats Association (representing the majority of the boat businesses) and are jumping to the tune of the other association, St Ives Boatman’s Association.

Our only way forward now is protests, petitions and legal action.

It is such a shame that the council refuse to even listen to us or work with us. We have no idea of their end game. Maybe to destroy the very fabric of St Ives all together?

We are all at a loss as to their motives. St Ives harbour front has hundreds of locals and tourists and sometimes it’s into the thousands per day
Why does 6 extra people selling tickets stood at an allocated location seem such an issue for the council, what is the motive behind it all as it doesn’t stack up in the eyes of many?
The impact caused to local businesses, local staff and local families is detrimental and damaging but the benefit to the council is what?

The losses incurred by the affected businesses now run in the 10s of thousands of pounds. Some businesses may never even recover from this.

Anywhere else would have given each business that were previously licensed, a selling position. The council are sadly treating us like criminals and we will continue to fight for our businesses. We appreciate all your messages of support and kind words very much as this is very wrong. Who will the council try to destroy next?

On a lighter note, here are some pictures of the boats working in previous years for you to enjoy. Thank you for reading

SIPBA ☺️
🚤🛥️🛟⚓️🐬🐟🪼🦭🦈🐋🦀🦞

19/04/2025

Thank you to the national newspapers for supporting our cause ❤️

FURIOUS locals and businesses in a world-famous UK seaside town are facing crippling new fines of up to £1,000. The row has exploded in St Ives, Cornwall, where new rules introduced by the council …

19/04/2025

The Council has said it understands 'change is difficult' but adds the tradition is 'alive and well' and 'will continue as they always have'.

19/04/2025

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14624929/fury-UK-seaside-town-ban.html

The Council has said it understands 'change is difficult' but adds the tradition is 'alive and well' and 'will continue as they always have'.

17/04/2025

A century of Cornish Tradition wiped away in the blink of an eye 😢.

Selling tickets on ‘lifeboat corner’ has been a staple tradition of the boatmen for over a Century. Touting as it has always been known locally, has been happening in this location for generations. Always here despite the changing street scape with the new lifeboat house built in the 90s.

This unique identifier of the town has always left an indelible mark on the visitors and locals alike, core memories that invoke a nostalgic time capsule within your mind.

Please share this so we can help overturn this cultural vandalism.

Thanks, SIPBA

16/04/2025

Thank you so much everybody for your support!

SIPBA

12/04/2025

On a rainy day in st Ives, here’s a little post to give you an insight into our lives as pleasure boat operators.

Over the course of the long winter months, with our boats out of the water in Hayle, we invest tens of thousands to maintain and improve our vessels, to comply with new rules and regulations and to make sure every vessel is safe to carry passengers.

Easter is late this year so it’s an extra long winter for us and the excitement certainly starts building up to see the harbour buzzing again and everybody finally earning some money again, or should I say the excitement certainly used to…

In January we were hit with the news that the town council would remove touting from the gate on lifeboat corner, a tradition that has been running for decades and has been the backbone of many businesses over the years. With this crushing news there were lots of worried business owners wondering how we were going to operate this year. The council came back with a map, with 10 dots on it and said that these were the locations that they would allow booths to tout from and that and businesses that have any links between them, say the directors are the same must share a booth, regardless if these businesses are completely separate LTD companies. Our members were obviously not happy with this, given the council had dished out individual business licenses for the past 5 years, so we made a counter proposal. Accepting losing the gate to tout from was a big blow but we took the councils map and added 5 or so more dots on it for additional booths in reasonable locations to tout from. This was immediately shut town by our town council and we were basically told it’s their way or the highway. These boats and businesses have been trading here for years and years and now the council want to shut us all down? We emailed back and forth for the next couple of months trying to offer the council solutions but they were sticking to their guns and not even giving us an inch. As the eagerly awaited Easter holidays approached the once happy and excited mood was grim and we still had no answers. With this our association emailed the town council informing them that we intended to start work and we would have to tout on the gate or wherever we previously traded for the past 5 years until they had found a solution. Now with a stunning forecast of calm seas and sunshine we turned up to work and were met with threats, personal messages from the mayor and members of the town council also. We had enforcement officers stood in front of our ticket sellers issuing fixed penalty notices of £100 a day with threats to escalate to £1000 and a criminal record. With our businesses and start to the season in tatters we walked to the guildhall with all our staff and calmly tried to explain that all these young people are out of work in this beautiful weather because of the council. We made a desperate plea for some temporary licenses so we could work the Easter holidays and keep operating whilst the council found a resolution. We were met with a blatant NO and told that if we were caught trading we would be fined and they would take our touting desks away. This is now carrying into a second week of the Easter holidays and we have lost thousands already. Two boats have not even craned in due to the uncertainty.

To mention one in particular, the Seahorse has not been given a desk and the owners have been told it has to share a desk with other businesses. The Seahorse has been trading independently from the same position for over 50 years and I’m sure most of you will have fond memories of the previous owners. It makes wonder, what would Marshy think of all this ❤️

We don’t know how this season will go now for us, and it may the last year for many of us, but we will be sure to keep everybody updated on this page. And on a happier note as the season progresses we will be posting lots of pictures of boats, seals, dolphins, whales and other marine life!

SIPBA