Last weekend, for the third week in a row, wild winds and flooding risks returned as Storm Darragh hammered into the UK, triggering a rare Red Warning from the Met Office.
As with Storm Bert, the effects were wide and far-reaching. Overall, at least 29 waterways were directly affected by Storm Darragh. The most noticeable impact was from fallen trees – it’s certainly well over 440, but as some that fell in remote parts of the network are still being reported the total keeps going up. Our thanks go to boaters who continue to play a vital role in reporting storm damage so that we can respond as quickly as possible. It was also heartening to see the boating community at its best as it came together to mutually support each other through the storm.
Aside from this, to name just some of the other impacts; there was overtopping and flooding, boundary walls damaged, weirs blocked by debris, electricity lines fallen across locks, boats sunk and stoppage sites left in disarray.
Here’s more detail on what happened around the network:
The Leicester Line and the Northampton, Welford & Market Harborough arms of the Grand Union Canal were all blocked by fallen trees, as was the navigation on the main line, near Blisworth. The same was true, in a few places, on the Trent & Mersey Canal where we also had to recover a boat that had been blown adrift from its moorings.
On the South Oxford Canal another couple of trees had fallen and blocked the navigation as well as two large holes appearing either side of Lift Bridge 183. While destructive wind was ravaging the region, flooding was also widespread at Thrupp.
In the North West, where winds were stronger, traffic barriers at a couple of swing bridges were ripped from their mounts and a boat had to be retrieved from Hunts Sluice on the River Weaver. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only one. In Liverpool South Docks an unoccupied boat was pulled off its mooring, collided with another boat and sank.
Further south, including waterways inside the Red Warning area, the number of trees down runs into the tens. The Kennet & Avon, Bridgwater & Taunton and Swansea canals all had multiple trees blocking navigation as well as numerous issues with high water levels.
Waterways across the West Midlands saw around 400 felled trees blocking navigation. The Staffordshire & Worcestershire, Stratford, Coventry, Tame Valley, Old Main Line, Llangollen, Birmingham & Fazeley, Dudley No.1, Daw End, Shropshire Union, Birmingham & Warwick Junction, Montgomery and Worcester & Birmingham canals were all affected. Other damage included overtopping of canals, electricity cables brought down and weirs blocked by debris, to name just a few.
Perhaps the least affected, Yorkshire & North East still had trees blown over which caused issues on the Chesterfield and Huddersfield Narrow canals, and a sunken boat on the Calder & Hebble.
As with previous storms, teams and volunteers were out across the network as soon as it was safe to be, with many multi-tonne obstructions removed within 24 hours of their felling. As more continue to be dealt with, and flood waters recede, we’ll learn how they may impact our big winter stoppage programme, with stoppage notices being updated as soon as possible.
Richard Parry, chief executive
End of year message from chief executive, Richard Parry
The end of the year is a time to reflect on the past 12 months, what we’ve achieved and the challenges to come.
A substantial, and very tangible, challenge is the increasingly frequent extreme weather events. We’ve already seen a number of named storms this winter after starting 2024 with a succession of brutal storms that took weeks of our teams’ time and cost almost £10m in recovery and repair costs disrupting many of our plans. You’ll also have seen our new fundraising campaign which asks the wider public to support their local canals to survive these extreme storm events.
We know how much of a challenge storm events can be for boaters too, and we’re always very grateful for your help and co-operation, reporting damage and other arising issues to us. More broadly, boaters are at the heart of our stewardship of the canal network. You bring life and vitality that generates so much of the attraction to the millions who love our canals across the globe. Canals contribute a range of wider benefits to society; health and wellbeing, nature and biodiversity; water security and flood alleviation; and the economic benefit that a vibrant, actively-used canal deliver to communities across England & Wales.
We recognise that there’s a lot we’ve got to do to provide the positive experience that boaters expect. Your feedback has been that, for some, that hasn’t been fully realised in the past few years despite the rising sums of money we are investing in the network. So, after gathering the input from boater representatives, we launched our Better Boating Plan last month with ten areas where we will focus our attention to provide a tangibly improved boating experience during 2025. You’ll be able to track progress on our website next year.
In the meantime, we celebrate the progress we’ve made – we’ve achieved Green Flag Awards for more stretches of canals than ever (up to 750 miles now) and the popularity of volunteering for the Trust continues to grow. Look out for a shout-out for more volunteers early next year ahead of the main 2025 season. We’ve also reached a record number of Friends making regular donations in recent weeks, and secured some exciting new partnerships. Thanks to so many of you who give the Trust your time and support.
Right now, the focus is on delivering our winter works programme, to install all the new lock gates we’ve prioritised and fix as many of the other critical repairs as we can. Much of the work we do is out of sight of course; we’ve again spent millions of pounds on unavoidable reservoir safety works. We’ve also dealt with numerous third-party issues – the most notorious being the cyanide pollution on the Walsall Canal which put us at the centre of a major incident, thankfully now being effectively managed by our expert team so that the long-term recovery of the canal is well advanced.
Our long-term financial position remains challenging but we’ve launched our new fundraising strategy (see Maggie’s update at our recent Annual Public meeting still on You tube). Our relationship with the new Government is developing and we’re steadily connecting with the 129 new MPs on our network. Next week we publish our 23/24 Impact Report to showcase some of the great work we do with places and people in communities network-wide.
So we head into 2025 with optimism for the future but conscious of the challenges we face.
Hopefully we’ll all be spared a repeat of last year’s stormy Christmas weather and you’re able to enjoy a peaceful and rewarding festive period, whether you’re on the water or not.
Winter on Leeds & Liverpool Canal
A Boaters’ App
One of the commitments from our plan for better boating, that Richard mentions above, is to improve how boaters can communicate with us. A key step in achieving this is to develop a boater app which will make it easier to access our online services, for example this could let you quickly report faults and find out what has already been reported.
To ensure that it includes the most relevant features we would like to ask you complete a short survey, the questions include how you currently access similar information and what would be most important to you from an app. It should take no longer than 5 minutes to send in your feedback anonymously and will help shape the development of the app.
There are two different ways to access the survey, depending on the device you are currently using, but the questions are exactly the same:
Maintenance, repair and restoration work this weekend
As you’ll know there are times when we need to fix things that unexpectedly break. Of course, you’ll notice that the list below is much longer now that we’re in the winter stoppage season! 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.
Your Boaters’ Report
Every year we draw together a whole gamut of information and produce a report for boaters that outlines how our income was generated and examines the expenditure on our charitable activities to maintain the waterways.
You’ll find it in the latest version, covering 2022/23, as well as highlights of some of the large-scale resilience and repair works we completed, and the many day-to-day challenges over that period.
As you may know, we generate revenue to support our work in a variety of ways. A little under a quarter of our total income comes from our annual grant from Government – but the amount has been fixed from 2021 with no allowance for inflation and none planned; and it is due to fall by 5% a year from 2027 onwards.
We receive around another quarter of our income from careful management of our commercial portfolio of property and non-property investments. We generate another 17% of our income by using the network to support utilities such as water distribution, power cables and digital networks.
We also raise money by shaping projects paid for by third-party funders, councils and companies, alongside donations from supporters. Boaters, of course, also play a central role in funding our work: the money we receive from boat licences forms a vital 11% of our finances, with another 10% from moorings and fees from boating businesses. These contributions are essential to help us take care of the waterways and fund the projects and other vital interventions that keep our canals alive.
All of which enabled us to increase our expenditure on charitable activities in 2022/23 to £199.5 million, representing a 10% uplift in the investment in maintaining our network to help keep it navigable and, with that, all the benefits this also brings to wildlife and local communities.
The report shows that not all this expenditure was by choice. For example, in a single week in November 2022, we had to remove three cars that had been dumped in our West Midlands waterways – from the New Main Line Canal, from the Grand Union and from the Dudley No.1 Canal. Each takes time and effort to deal with and ensure any locks are safe for use. The cost of these three removals alone came to around £10,000 as specialist equipment had to be brought in.
Other case studies in the report detail £450,000 worth of repairs at Anderton Boat Lift and over £22 million spent on reservoirs.
Did you know?
Many boaters know a fair bit about us, and our work, but the report contains a veritable buffet of statistics that, probably, will surprise most…
£7.4 million was spent dredging 57km
We carried out 325 in-house construction projects
There were 208,090 hours of volunteer lock keeping
We removed 120,000 tonnes of material from waterways (equivalent to about 60,000 medium sized cars)
112 lock gates were replaced
Geese in the snow
Waterways Chaplaincy: Support for boaters this Christmas
As the festive season approaches, the Waterways Chaplaincy is there to offer a helping hand to those navigating life on and beside the waterways. Christmas can be a joyful time, but for many, it is also a season of heightened challenges.
Whether you’re facing financial hardship, feeling isolated, or struggling with physical or mental health, its volunteer chaplains are available to listen, provide pastoral support, and help connect you with practical assistance.
Chaplains are trained to walk alongside the boating community, offering independent and confidential care. We understand the unique challenges of life afloat, from limited access to healthcare or benefits, to the impact of the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
Over Christmas, it can provide emotional support, advocate on your behalf, or simply share a warm conversation to help you feel less alone. It probably knows which Church has the best mince pies, and what time the carol service is too!
If you or someone you know could use a listening ear or practical help this Christmas, don’t hesitate to reach out. The Waterways Chaplaincy is there to make sure no one feels left behind on the journey through the festive season.
To learn more or connect with a chaplain, visit Waterways Chaplaincy. Together with boaters, it wants tp bring comfort and hope to our waterways this Christmas.
We’re going to make it easier and more convenient for boaters to request an extended stay whilst cruising when illness or boat breakdown prevent onward journeys. We’ve listened to feedback about our web form and have created a way to make a request whenever you need it by logging into your existing licensing account instead.
This will be the same way as you already do for passage bookings, boat licence renewals and the online shop. We hope that this new service which will automatically approve qualifying stays will be a lot more convenient for everyone. It will also free up a lot of staff time to deal with other issues and provide support to customers facing serious medical or other problems.
We are going to make the new service available via web licensing before Christmas, and will be turning off the ability to request an extended stay via our main website in the New Year.
And finally…
It was lovely to read, earlier this week in the Yorkshire Post, a comment piece from the publication extolling ‘Our vital waterways’ together with front page reporting on the lock refurbishment at Leeds Lock. As well as mentioning the health benefits of being by water and the importance of supporting our fundraising appeal to respond to winter storms, the final paragraph hits the nail on the head ‘…The network of canals in Yorkshire may no longer serve the purpose they were intended for but they still play such an important role in the region’s landscape.’
Thanks for reading Boaters’ Update throughout the year and I look forward to bringing you more news, events and information in 2025.
I hope you have a lovely festive break,
Damian
Last Edited: 13 December 2024
Stay connected
Sign up to our monthly newsletter and be the first to hear about campaigns, upcoming events and fundraising inspiration
