A community of boaters will have nowhere to go when a bylaw making unauthorised mooring a criminal offence comes into effect on March 13.

The bylaw means that from 1am on March 13, owners of boats moored on council-owned or managed land without permission could be fined or imprisoned. Every 24 hours the boat is attached to the land will count as a new crime.

The bylaw will affect more than 10 boaters who have lived on the Ham side of the river at Teddington Lock for between three and nine years. Tabby Booth, who owns her boat with her partner James Heslip, said the community had not been offered any sort of compromise and was willing to rent moorings off the council.

She said: "We are willing to co-operate but no alternative is being offered to us. No one is talking to us as human beings.

"I don’t think Richmond Council realises this is the situation. There is no other place for us to go. It will cause lots of other problems on the waterways as all these boats are going to have to move around constantly.

"We have called and emailed for advice but it doesn’t work."

The boaters feel many complaints against them are unwarranted, and Ms Booth said they had rarely been informed directly of any issues.

She said: "People complain about the area getting untidy, but we always take a lot of care and clean up after ourselves and other people. This is where we live, after all.

"A lot of the complaints have apparently been about our dogs not being on leads. It is a dog walking path, and our dogs are as well behaved as any of the others that walk along here, they are not vicious at all."

Mr Heslip, who also works with Ms Booth at a children's art school in Clapham, said the boaters have received various forms of abuse.

He said: "I have been woken up by someone out on a jog sticking their head in the boat to shout ‘pikey scum’, people have had sugar put in their engines and signs have been put up that said river 'pikeys operating in this area'.

"Narrowboating is a traditional English thing, especially somewhere like Richmond, which is known for the river, and it is just being stifled.

Richmond and Twickenham Times:

"They are trying to gentrify the area but by getting rid of the boats they are ruining its character."

Mr Heslip said he and Ms Booth, along with the rest of the community, own their boats, pay for boat licences and insurance and lead a sustainable way of life.

He said: "They want to chuck people of the homes they have chosen for themselves. We are no different to anyone else, we just chose to live on a boat rather than in a house."

Council cabinet member for environment, Pamela Fleming, said the council had long been under enormous pressure from residents to do something about illegal mooring.

She said all the correct procedures had been carried out in terms of implementing the bylaw, and the council did everything it could to publicise the consultation, which took place late last year. Coun Fleming said she had not been contacted by any of the boaters to discuss the issue.

She said: "It is not something that has suddenly happened. It has been in process for a long time so I would have assumed that the people involved would have known about the bylaw and made some alternative arrangements.

"I don’t want to be unsympathetic to people but they have known about it for a long time."

Coun Fleming said she will talk to officers about the options to go elsewhere.

Ms Booth said: "If we want to live an alternative lifestyle, why shouldn’t we? We have never taken anything from anybody.

"We are not trying to be difficult. We can’t just disappear and if we don’t get any help finding somewhere to go then it’s just shifting the problem."