Fixing the things that matter most to boaters, you'll find plenty of news of what we've been doing for you in this latest update along with an invite and a sneak preview.
Narrowboat moored at Great Haywood in autumn sunshine.
With only a week and a half to go until our winter stoppage programme begins, our teams have been out and about continuing to do the day-to-day tasks to keep navigations open for boaters.
In any given week the range of work is hugely varied and, as we’ve all come to expect, there’s always a curve ball, or two, thrown in for good measure. To give a flavour of what’s been done recently here are a few examples. We start on the River Soar:
Getting the mucky stuff out
With so much rain over the last few months you’d be forgiven for thinking that the top would be far away from the bottom now and, therefore, there’s little point in dredging. However, while extra rain might increase levels temporarily, it does usually mean that extra sediment and detritus also gets swept in, ending up on the bed of a canal or river.
This is why, if you’re planning on boating through, or in, Leicester you’ll benefit from our £140,000 dredging programme that we’re doing as part of our ongoing work to keep the River Soar navigable to boats, and to ensure that it continues to bring important benefits to local communities and wildlife.
We’ve enlisted the help of specialist contractors to remove over 1,100 tonnes of silt – the equivalent weight of nearly 90 of the new Routemaster buses – from the river in the city. Once removed it will be taken to a specialist waste facility for disposal. The works, which started a week or so ago, are being carried out on a 500-metre section of the river at Limekiln Lock, near Abbey Park, as well as at Freemans Meadow Lock, near the King Power Stadium.
As well as making life easier if you’re on the water, the works will also bring environmental benefits, removing litter and harmful plastics from the water and improving conditions for wildlife. The section of canal around Limekiln Lock is particularly prone to litter in the water, with items being washed in from the adjacent Willow Brook.
Dredging will remove a lot of the historic litter and, with our volunteers helping to clear rubbish regularly and Leicester City Council and Trent Rivers Trust working to reduce litter in Willow Brook, it’s hoped that there will be a big reduction in items found in the river.
Richard Bennett, nature recovery manager, explains: "Dredging is a vital part of the regular cycle of maintenance we are constantly doing to keep our rivers and canals open for boating and also available for those on the towpath and nature that depends on them.
“We know from speaking to boaters that these sections of the River Soar are a priority, so we’re really pleased to be able to improve things for them and make a visit to Leicester that bit more appealing.
“Dredging also brings important benefits for nature and we hope that this project, on top of the great work being done by our volunteers and partners to tackle the problem of litter, will mean that the river is cleaner, greener and more welcoming to local wildlife.”
An example of conventional dredging from a pontoon
Beam TLC
We’ve met reactive team manager, Dan Allen, on these pages before. Last time we talked to him he was working at a site on the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal. Recently though he was called in to action on the North Stratford Canal. I’ll let Dan pick up the story:
“Lock 14, at Lapworth, has been a bit of a thorn in my side. At the end of last month I got a call early one morning, not much after 7am, to say that it had broken. After a flurry of calls to my team we managed to get to site, affix two steel plates with bolts to reconnect it to the head post and reopen the canal to navigation at lunchtime. At the time we planned for it to be a temporary fix as we are doing a full beam replacement in January.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t see just how much the beam had deteriorated on the inside and the temporary fix didn’t last as long as hoped. A couple of weeks later, at the end of a long day, we had a call from Andre, the area operations manager, who was returning with his team from another job on the North Stratford (editor’s note - more on this below) when they noticed that Lock 14 was about to fail again. So, as a retaining strap was fitted to the beam to stop any more movement, Andre and I came up with a repair plan for the next morning.
“Over the course of the evening I coordinated everything with team member Ed so that we could meet onsite the following day with everything we needed to get cracking.
“Unfortunately, the beam wasn’t saveable, so we stripped off the hardware and cut the beam down to make room for a temporary beam. We made the temporary one from 8’x2’ soft wood which was laminated together to form a new beam. We then refitted all of the original hardware. We didn’t need to put out a stoppage notice as whenever a boat turned up we downed tools, helped them through the lock, and then carried on! Thankfully we managed to get finished by 1pm.
“An important note to all of this is that we’ll be fitting new, long-lasting, beams in January. When we come to replace the gates in the following winter we’ll just remove the beams and refit them to the new gates.”
Editor’s note: The job that Andre was returning from was further along the Canal at Lock 10. The top end paddle had come out of its frame which meant that the lock couldn’t be emptied. This resulted in the fuel boat ‘Rich on Roach’ unable to exit the lock. The last picture in the gallery below, taken by Rich, was accompanied with this lovely caption:
‘Well done to Dan and the team for sorting out lock 14 at Lapworth. The best beam repair that I have ever seen. Also thank you to Julie and Tom (from Andre’s team) for rescuing me from Lock 10 by putting the paddle back in the frame. (Trust) ground workers are brilliant.’
Thanks Rich!
Initial repair to Lock 14, North Stratford Canal
Working for the Don
Ok, we haven’t gone rogue and started contracting our services out to gangsters. Instead, area operations manager Dan Hazard, and his team, have been working on the Don Aqueduct on the New Junction Canal.
Before giving the stage to Dan, did you know that the New Junction was the last canal built in England, opening in 1905, for commercial purposes? So, what have Dan and his team been doing on this relative newcomer?
“We are carrying out some repairs and upgrades to the four sluices on the flood defence doors. Just to explain, the Aqueduct runs over the River Don and has two massive guillotine gates at each end. When the River is in flood these gates are lowered to prevent the rising waters swamping the Canal and, in turn, flooding the surrounding countryside.
“With this particular project we have fabricators working from a floating pontoon as the sluices are in the centre of the navigation when the flood gate is lowered. We didn’t close the navigation as boats can still pass the aqueduct, it’s just that there may just be a short wait while the area is made safe and the pontoon moved.
“Unfortunately, as we started work on the first week, the heavens opened. As you’ll expect, this raised the River Don and the flood gates needed to be lowered to protect the Canal. As a result, our work had to continue into the following week.
“The weather’s intervention, combined with some practical challenges working on the sluices, means that it’s taken us longer than our initial three-day plan of getting one sluice completed and operational on each upstream and downstream flood gate.
“We were fairly relaxed about the delay though for two reasons. First and foremost, we knew that weren’t overly inconveniencing boaters as there would only be a short wait before they could continue their journey. Secondly, we always try to do the best job possible and everyone knows that usually doesn’t happen if you’re in a rush!
“There will be further works planned in future for the remaining sluices as well as installing some access gantries that will keep our team safe when operating the sluices. As we always do, we’ll publish a stoppage notice when it’s planned in, although we don’t expect any navigation closures for any part of the works.”
Working on the massive Don Aqueduct gates of the New Junction Canal
Working for boaters – in numbers
With over 2,000 miles of canals and rivers it’s nigh on impossible to list all the things we’ve been doing over the last fortnight to keep navigations open (I’m sure you haven’t got a spare couple of days to read the entire list!) but a scan of our stoppage notifications shows that we’ve…
Carried out five general lock repairs such as repairing quoins, brickwork and beams
Removed four wind-blown trees that were impeding navigation
Repaired three pump-out stations
Carried out three boater safety activities (such as placing buoys around hazards etc.)
Repaired two bridges
Fixed two sets of lock paddles
Carried out two tunnel inspections
Repaired two sluices
Fixed one customer service facilities (such as toilets)
Worked on a dredging project
Repaired one Elsan
Fixed (or in the process of fixing) one embankment
Repaired one culvert
Conducted/facilitated eight bridge inspections
Since we started sharing these statistics (12 July 2024), the totals are:
Removed 95 wind-blown trees that were impeding navigation
Carried out 68 general lock repairs such as repairing quoins, beams and brickwork
Repaired 34 bridges
Fixed 24 lock paddles
Repaired 24 pump out stations
Fixed 17 customer service facilities (such as toilets)
Fixed (or in the process of fixing) 15 embankments
Repaired 15 Elsans
Worked on 11 dredging projects
Repaired 11 sluices
Carried out ten dive survey/repairs
Carried out seven boater safety activities (such as placing buoys around hazards etc.)
Carried out/working on five piling projects
Removed four sunken boats
Repaired five culverts
Carried out/facilitated five bathymetric surveys (a water-based survey that maps the depths and shapes of underwater terrain)
Worked to control three invasive species (Pennywort, duckweed etc.)
Removed two sunken cars
Carried out two tunnel inspections
Two stoppages due to nesting birds
Annoyingly had to clear one lot of illegal fly tipping (well, one that required a stoppage, there were plenty more!)
Conducted/facilitated 95 bridge inspections
The above list doesn’t include any work conducted purely on towpaths, water management (which there’s been of a lot due to the large volume of rain), 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!
Autumn at Farnhill, Leeds & Liverpool Canal
Maintenance, repair and restoration work this weekend
As someone who’s out on, or by, the water more often than most, you’ll know that there are times when we need to fix things that unexpectedly break. 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.
Ashton Lock stoppage lock 7
Popcorn at the ready!
We’re delighted to invite you to our Annual Public Meeting being held online at 1pm on Wednesday 6 November.
Hosted by our chair, David Orr CBE, with our chief executive, Richard Parry, you will hear about many of our achievements and challenges over the past year and our plans for the future. Along with updates on our finances, there will be presentations on our fundraising strategy, the impact our work is having on local communities and plans to improve navigation and the service for boaters.
Send us your questions
The presentations will be followed by a Q&A with David and Richard. Please submit your questions either in advance or during the meeting by emailing them to [email protected]
How to join the event
On 6 November at 1pm, tune into our live stream where you will be able to join the APM. If you are unable to make the live event, it will be recorded and available for you to view at a later date.
‘Simpler Recycling’ in England
New ‘’Simpler Recycling’ legislation comes into effect in England next year. From 31 March 2025 it will require most businesses to arrange separate collections for different types of waste. In addition to recycling, the biggest change is that food waste will need to be separated from general waste.
What this will mean for us is that all customer service points with waste facilities for boaters will have to provide separate bins for:
Dry recyclables – paper, card, metals, plastics
Glass
Food waste
Residual waste
As you know, there are separate recycling facilities at many of our sites, but this legislation will ensure that every site throughout England will offer the same provision. As this legislation will apply throughout England, you are likely to see changes being introduced at rubbish points everywhere.
Over the coming weeks we will share more information including:
When the changes will be introduced
Exactly what types of waste can go in each bin
What signage will be in place to make it easier to see what goes in where
Practical hints and tips on how you can manage your recycling & waste on board
Like all organisations, we will face financial penalties for waste that is not correctly separated, so it is important that as much waste as possible is correctly disposed of - so we really do need your help.
It is vital that we all work together to keep these waste costs as low as possible, to ensure money doesn’t have to be diverted from the work to maintain our canals and rivers.
If you have any questions or if you are already a keen recycler on board and have any practical advice or tips that we can pass on, please do let us know.
Boaters recycling facilities in London
Canals face a perfect storm – our winter campaign
This November we’ll be launching our Winter Appeal ‘Perfect Storm’ and wanted to share it with you before we go public. The Appeal will highlight the work of our volunteers and staff in the face of extreme winter weather. Their work, across the country, helps ensure our network is as strong and resilient as possible and allows us to respond to the impact of storms as they happen.
As you’ll know, our network is facing a perfect storm. The rising threat of extreme weather - more frequent and severe storms, flooding, and landslips - is causing unprecedented damage. Last winter alone, these events left us with an additional £10 million in emergency repairs, just to make the canals safe and accessible again. We have been dealing with the impact of heavy rainfall and storms on the canal network this season already, and we know there will be more to come.
Unexpected floods, bank breaches or bridge emergency events can happen at any time, however carefully as we assess risks. That’s why we’re telling the public that we urgently need their help, so we can respond quickly to vital repairs and make our canals stronger and more resilient for the future.
A key focus of this campaign will be the fantastic efforts of staff and volunteers. We’ll be highlighting their work improving the resilience and strength of the network, for now and future years to come. This will be shown through case studies, from the viewpoints and experiences, of our colleagues and volunteers.
Last year a huge landslip hit the Oxford Canal’s Easenhall Cutting, which we’re still working on. After weeks of torrential rain, 4,000 tonnes of mud slipped 18 metres, completely blocking the busiest canal in the country. Thankfully, no boaters or walkers were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but these repairs alone cost £2 million to complete. And this was far from the only incident to affect the network last year, with eight storms in three months last winter causing significant damage across the network.
You may have firsthand experience of storms damaging the canals that you navigate, the towpaths where you walk, cycle or fish, and damage the habitats our waterway wildlife depends on. We can’t change the weather or halt the passage of time, but we can get ready for the worst of winter to come, and that’s what we’ll be asking the public to help us do this winter. We’ll be stressing that just £35 could put boots on the ground, helping our emergency response make canals and towpaths safe and secure; £50 could make canals more resilient, help to dam canal leaks, rescue fish or save damaged bridges; and £75 could repair and restore canals, protecting and strengthening the network for generations to come.
You’ll be able to learn more about our winter appeal and keep up to date with the campaign on our website from November. Please help spread the word this winter by sharing among friends and family. Thank you for your support.
Last Edited: 18 October 2024
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