PS Don’t forget that new ‘Simpler Recycling’ legislation is now in effect. Deliveries of the new recycling bins are continuing and available at increasingly more Trust locations – we’d love to hear from you how you sort and manage your recycling on your boat.
Working for boaters
What a difference a fortnight makes! Over the last two weeks many of us have had the opportunity to enjoy wall-to-wall sunshine as spring got off to an unseasonably warm start. As quickly as layers were discarded, thoughts may have turned to a long, bucolic, summer afloat. And, as you’ll have read over the last half dozen or so issues of Boaters’ Update, we spent the winter labouring away so that you’re able to do just that.
However, as Robert Burns prophesies though, ‘the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry’ and we have more on that below (see the pieces about the Macclesfield and Walsall canals to see how unexpected turns of events cause disruption).
But first, we return to the Kennet & Avon – you may remember that I visited back in the dark and cold days of February just before the Open Day and while work was underway on Caen Hill Flight. That work, along with a raft of other projects on the 87-mile canal, has now been completed.
Kennet & Avon prepped for busy boating
This year's winter programme, which saw a £382,000 investment in the canal, has seen lock gates replaced at the iconic Caen Hill Lock Flight in Devizes on locks 33 and 40, handcrafted at our charity’s specialist workshops. Lock 52 at Wootton Rivers had substantial repairs made to the bottom gates and cill to provide more resilience for boaters crossing the highest point of the canal this summer.
Repairs have been made to the top lock gates at Crofton, while the bottom and top gates at Copse Lock and at Colthrop Lock in Berkshire have been restored, where timber repairs were made to the bottom gates and grouting to the cills using divers.
Work is continuing at Sheffield Lock near Reading to replace wooden quoins.
Rob Coles, area operations manager for Kennet & Avon East, explained: "The repairs and maintenance we’ve carried out this winter are vital to protect the canal from the extreme weather events that are taking their toll on our historic network.
"Our programme of works keeps the canal open for navigation for boaters, benefits wildlife and improves it for the local communities who live and use the canal every day."
In total, repairs were planned at 159 sites on the canal network across England and Wales this winter as part of our commitment to care for 2,000 miles of inland waterways to protect navigation, improve habitats and provide the numerous wellbeing benefits that come from being by, or on, water.
Tardebigge update
In the last edition we chatted to principal engineer Gary Ramsell about the stoppage at Tardebigge Top Lock on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal. Since then, the project has progressed and we’re pleased to able to offer this update:
The initial works have been to safely secure the lock so that the business of identifying the cause of the bulging wall can begin. The lock has now been drained and Kingspan blocks have been installed to support the failing wall.
This week we have been creating an appropriate access and compound area as well as constructing a temporary new pedestrian route along the offside of the lock. We will also be installing two pontoons across the canal so that the towpath can reopen again.
From next week we have an archaeologist on site who will be watching and inspecting the chamber wall as it is taken down. We are planning to reuse as many of the original bricks as possible, in addition to the coping stones. We’re working closely with the Bromsgrove and Redditch Council Conservation Team to finalise the restoration scope so we can gain Listed Building Consent. It is expected that we will be investing over £500,000 in this project.
The exact timeline for completion will be determined following dismantling and further investigations, although the flight is anticipated to remain closed until the end of August. Restoring the lock and reopening the canal and towpath is our priority. We appreciate boaters’ patience during this important project and will will provide an update next Thursday (17 April).
Macclesfield Canal breach
Unfortunately, as you may know, there was a breach on the Macclesfield Canal near Bosley, on Friday 28 March, due to a leak in the canal bed.
Our charity’s emergency team worked late into the night to help move around 15 boats away from the breach and installed stop planks to prevent any further loss of water. We’ve carrying out a fish rescue and worked to restore water levels on either side of the affected area, which we expect to take several days.
Our engineers have visited the site, reviewed the damage, and are planning repairs, with initial findings indicating a substantial repair will take up 12 weeks. We will provide further updates, with one scheduled in the coming days.
We have closed the towpath and navigation and are in contact with boaters moored in the affected area. We would like to apologise for any inconvenience. We’re asking everyone to stay safe and keep away from the breach site until the repairs are complete.
This unfortunately is another illustration of the challenges facing our nation’s 250-year-old canal network. We’re asking people to support our work, either through a donation, volunteering or spreading the word about how important it is to keep canals alive.
Breach on the Macclesfield Canal (1)
Toxic sodium cyanide dredged from Walsall Canal
Last week marked a significant milestone in the recovery of the Walsall Canal, following a disastrous pollution incident in August 2024, when around 4,000 litres of contaminant, including highly toxic sodium cyanide and zinc cyanide, leaked into the canal from a neighbouring business. As a result, around one mile of the canal in the Pleck area of Walsall has had to remain closed for boats for the past eight months.
Dredging begins
A multi-agency major incident was declared at the time and, while the towpath has since reopened, the canal has remained closed to boats and devoid of wildlife. The company identified as the source of the pollution is under investigation by the Environment Agency.
Now, we're overseeing dredging operations to remove cyanide-contaminated silt from the canal bed (the cost is rightly falling to the polluter). This is a crucial step in the canal’s ecological recovery and a major step towards reopening the waterway to boats.
The dredging is due to take several weeks, after which the sediment and water will be tested once again. The test results will determine if further steps are needed and when the canal can reopen.
A major milestone
Henriette Breukelaar, regional director, said: “We’re delighted that dredging of the Walsall Canal starts this week; this is a major milestone in the canal’s recovery.
“The awful spillage of cyanide into the community’s wonderful and historic canal has left this section ecologically devastated, wiping out wildlife, including the microorganisms that form the foundation of the canal’s ecosystem.
“So far, we have spent around half a million pounds of charitable funds, covering costs such as staff time, dam installation, materials, contractors, and lab testing. This is a huge resource that has been diverted from other essential activity to keep the region’s canals open and safe.
“We are grateful for the support of our partners and the generosity of the public, particularly those who contributed to the Crowdfunder, which raised £25,000. This will help ensure the canal remains a vital part of the local community and, hopefully soon, can fully reopen.
“We understand the closure has been frustrating for boaters and the local community, and we hope the dredging will move us closer to reopening the canal. We will continue to provide updates. Our priority remains the safety and restoration of this important waterway, and we appreciate everyone’s patience while we carry out this critical work.”
Water testing at Walsall
11 days left to respond to Commission reviewing boat licensing
As you may have read in previous editions, we asked a Commission to review our boat licensing framework. It is anticipated that the Commission will make recommendations to our Board of Trustees in September 2025.
As part of the process the Commission launched a survey to hear the views of boaters and other stakeholders with a view on boat licensing.
With just 11 days remaining the Commission is asking individuals and organisations, if they haven’t already, to complete a survey covering both the issues that they are experiencing and any changes people would like to see to our approach to boat licensing.
The survey can be completed anonymously. The survey runs until 9am on Tuesday 22 April. A link to the survey is on our commission webpage.
Working for boaters – in numbers
With over 2,000 miles of canals and rivers, a list of all the things we’ve been doing over the last fortnight to keep navigations open would be unfeasibly long to collate, but a scan of our stoppage notifications shows that we’ve…
Description
In the last fortnight
Since we started reporting (12 July 2024)
Conducted/facilitated bridge inspections
9
221
Carried out lock repairs (repairing quoins and brickwork) & gate replacements
6
170
Repaired bridges
5
82
Repaired Elsans
4
38
Carried out boater safety activities (such as placing buoys around hazards etc.)
3
26
Repaired pump out stations
2
44
Fixed customer service facilities (such as toilets)
2
33
Carried out Dredging project
2
220
Fixed lock paddles
1
37
Removed sunken boats
1
6
Repaired culverts
1
18
Carried out dive survey/repair
1
28
The above list doesn’t include any work conducted purely on towpaths, water management (which there’s always a lot of!), major reservoir projects and so on – it’s just a flavour of what we’ve been doing to help boaters keep moving on the cut!
Maintenance, repair and restoration work this weekend
As the articles above demonstrate, there are times when parts of such an old network need unscheduled work to keep them open and navigable. It’s a 200+ year old living, breathing national treasure that takes a lot of TLC. This is why, when something is damaged or breaks, we set about getting it repaired and operational as soon as we can. This means that from time to time we have to carry out repairs outside of our major winter stoppage programme. So below, you’ll find a list of navigations that have ongoing restrictions that may affect you if you’re planning to get out on the water this weekend:
When restrictions to navigation happen, we get them up on to our website as soon as we can – always best to have a scan before you set off. You can find out how to get stoppage notification alerts on your smartphone in this article.
If you have any questions about a specific closure, or spot an error in our system, please get in touch.
Seasonal opening times and booking information
As announced in the last Boaters’ Update we are making a number of improvements to our navigation notices system. One of these is to standardise how we present information on bookings and opening & closing times.
To ensure that all long-term navigational information on any waterway can be found easily and in one place, we are adding boating pages for each of our canals and rivers. A number of these dedicated pages have already been created and all of the existing notices for bookings and opening & closing times have been moved there.
The easiest way to find these pages is to use the search feature and just enter the relevant waterway, an example can be found here: Boating the Grand Union Canal | Canal & River Trust. We will continue to add more pages and develop the content. If there is something that you would like to see added to them, please let us know.
Any short-term amendments to these will be added as a notice, so you will continue to get stoppage and restriction alerts, if you are signed up to receive them. For more information on how to do this, please visit: How to get notifications on your smartphone.
Boating under a bridge
Bloomin’ ‘eck
We were recently alerted to dead fish in the Kennet & Avon Canal on the Bath Flight, which was the unfortunate result of a natural algal bloom and required the deployment of our specialist fishery contractors at significant cost.
Due to the sustained dry and sunny weather we are having, and forecasted to continue, we are calling on boaters to help our charity prevent and reduce the impacts of future blooms to better protect the health of our canals for people and wildlife.
Algae are microscopic plants and at normal levels they form an important part of the aquatic habitat, which give canals and rivers a diffuse greenish colour. However, under certain conditions algae can bloom (i.e. their population rapidly increases to unsustainable levels) that can lead to health risks for fish, humans and pets. Blooms usually occur in prolonged periods of settled sunny weather, like we are experiencing, in nutrient-rich water.
An algal bloom can cause dissolved oxygen concentrations in the water to rapidly decrease risking suffocation, smothering of other organisms, and irritation of fish gills. Some species of Blue-Green Algae are toxic and can cause illness and rashes in humans, and are potentially fatal to fish, wildlife, and pets.
Algal Blooms often have a vivid/vibrant green colour that can occur in clumps, streaks, or mats. Some examples are shown below.
While our colleagues remain vigilant across a lot of our network, we can’t be everywhere all at once. So please help us by reporting any observations of potential algal blooms to the Customer Services Team on 030 30 40 4040, and/or the Environment Agency on 0800 80 70 60. Please provide a description of the bloom, a location and, if possible, a photograph.
We have an established process for dealing with algal blooms, such as public health warnings, varying our water management and installing aeration equipment, among others. The sooner we are aware of an algal bloom the sooner we can start the process and ensure the safety of people, fish and wildlife.
As boaters, please help prevent algal blooms from occurring - you can do this by using water-course friendly washing up, washing and cleaning products that have lower concentrations of phosphates in them, and by not discarding biodegradable waste (food scraps etc.) overboard as this further depletes water oxygen levels.
Blue green bacterial bloom
Encouraging others to give
As many of you know, we have set ambitious fundraising targets to help support the work we do to keep navigations open. In this article, our head of individual & legacy giving, Hamish Shilliday, explains how we plan to raise more money from the wider public through fundraising:
‘Last year we agreed a new fundraising strategy that aims to rapidly grow our fundraising income from £6m to £60m per year over the next ten years. This involves a focus on reaching out to more of the public who benefit from our towpaths and the businesses that operate alongside it.
‘If successful, this will help to bridge the financial shortfall our charity faces following DEFRA’s decision to reduce our funding, better balancing the vital and gratefully received support that the boating community already gives.
‘One key challenge is a lack of public awareness that canals are looked after by a charity and, furthermore, that we urgently need public support if we are to keep our nation’s canals alive. In April we’re launching a new project, named GIVE, to address this head on. I’ve included the key information below, and we will be making more details available as soon as possible on our website.
What is GIVE?
GIVE will clearly spell out what we do as a charity to protect canals. GIVE is about targeted local fundraising for local canals, with funds contributing directly to the named sites.
Where will you see GIVE?
12 sites have been selected for 2025:
We know the more people understand about our sites – their history, the issues they face and how to protect them – the more likely they are to donate. We’ll be updating and developing some targeted posters, banners and signage at these sites to help us tell the story. This will be supported by updating the relevant webpages about each of these sites with aligned messaging and we will keep these pages updated when donations are put to good use for works on those sites.
What does GIVE look like?
We want to stand out to the public and grab their attention, whilst being sensitive to the heritage of the settings. We’ve chosen a vibrant colour scheme used by British Waterways’ historic workboats. This has been supported by research with YouGov to give us the confidence it will make the public stop and engage.
Following valuable feedback from the Navigation Advisory Group and boaters we’re maximising the positioning to engage towpath users; ensuring we limit artwork close to the water’s edge so as not to hinder navigation and checking with local teams that boaters’ eyelines aren’t compromised; and positioning artwork away from health & safety and warning signs.
When will this be going public?
Initial GIVE artwork will be in place by the end of April to coincide with the Easter Weekend. Local teams will be given further fundraising tools to support their fundraising throughout the summer and thereafter.
How can boaters help?
Some of the best opportunities and ideas come from the boating community. Boaters have given us leads to local companies, helped to mystery shop our face-to-face fundraising team and provided advice on potential locations for GIVE materials.
Hire boat companies are agreeing to kindly trial Trust charity packs in their holiday bookings this summer, allowing us to reach an engaged audience, which we are so thankful for the support of the likes of the Drifters Association and others.
We’d love to hear your ideas about how you can collaborate with our team to spread the word. We’d also like you to tell us your stories, which are some of the best ways to bring the canals to life and encourage public support.
And one of the best things you can do is support and encourage our fundraising team, whether that’s by talking to a face-to-face fundraiser on the bankside or sharing our appeals online. If you have ideas or knowledge to share, please get in touch.
The journey is ambitious, but we’re committed to protecting the network we all know and love, just as I know you are too. I look forward to continuing to listen to, and work with, you to make this ambition a reality over the coming years.
Best wishes,
Hamish'
Ask Gary. Again!
Thanks to everyone who wrote in with a question. For interest, they ranged from painting lock beams through work prioritisation. There were quite a few people asking the same things so I thought I’d put another ‘shout out’ in this edition!
Just to remind you, I spoke to principal engineer Gary Ramsell about the issues at Tardebigge Lock in the last edition. After which Gary kindly offered to answer any other engineering-type questions that boaters might have.
So, just send them in, I’ll set up my tripod and Gary’s expert engineer mind will do the rest!
Flotilla on its way to Parliament
Fund Britain’s Waterways (FBW) is a coalition of organisations representing hundreds of thousands of users and supporters of inland waterways. It is campaigning for national and local government to act now and protect the public benefit and natural capital of our waterways.
As part of this a flotilla is meandering its way towards Parliament to promote awareness of the huge economic, environmental and social well-being value the waterways provide – as you’ll see in the video below. We support the objectives of FBW and, Matthew Symonds, responsible for boating policy at the Trust, will be aboard one of the boats in the coming weeks.
Over the coming weeks you’ll find the flotilla at:
12 April – Taverners Boat Club
1 May – St Pancras Cruising Club
16 May – Lionhearts Cruising Club
24 May – Lichfield Canal Cruising Club
If you’re unable to show your support in person, FBW provides plenty of other ways to support the cause.
Last Edited: 11 April 2025
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