Regardless of where you were on the canal network last weekend, it would have been hard to miss the stormy arrival of Amy, the first named storm of the season. With trees mostly in full leaf, the potential for damage was intensified.
Irrespective of storms, we always, 365 days a year, have teams ready to respond. But when we are forewarned about a storm, that on-call effort is geared-up, putting the old adage of ‘preparing for the worst but hoping for the best’ into action.
Once Amy arrived - from the Lancaster to the Lee – teams were prioritising, and responding to, reports of fallen trees or damage to other infrastructure. I hope you stayed safe.
It would be a very long edition to list every individual fallen tree and, as the saying goes, a picture paints a thousand words:
Fallen tree Llangollen Storm Amy
Thanks to all our teams who were out all hours in atrocious weather making the network safe and available for navigation at the earliest opportunity. Whilst continued rain is helping to restore water levels after one of the driest years on record, let’s hope the next categorised storm is a long way off…
Campbell Robb joins as Chief Executive
Earlier this week we welcomed Campbell Robb who joins our charity as chief executive, after six years leading the social justice charity Nacro.
Before joining Nacro, Campbell was chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust, steering the organisation through a significant change programme. Prior to this he spent seven years as chief executive of Shelter, building its ability to support more people than ever before and leading the organisation’s response to some of the biggest changes to housing and welfare policy in generations.
Campbell also brings government experience: before joining Shelter, he was the first director general of the Office of the Third Sector, an adviser to HM Treasury, and was previously director of public policy at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO).
Campbell Robb
Campbell Robb comments: “It’s an honour to join such an important and passionate charity, and I’m genuinely excited about the journey ahead.
“Some may be wondering, "Why is he here?" Well, that is both easy and complicated. Firstly, it is because I love history, keeping it alive, learning from it, and reinventing it. All the organisations I have loved are like the Trust: they have a purpose, an important mission, but one that always needs to be renewed and updated. I like that challenge. I also do it out of work (old cars - Golf mark 2, and old houses - 3 years into an 800-year-old house...).
“Secondly, I believe passionately in the power of communities and how important they are not only to us as individuals, but also to our environment, our wellbeing and our future. I am so excited to learn about all the different communities we support, inside and outside the organisation, and how we can continue to use our canals to enhance and create communities that improve people’s lives, make them happy, and bring about positive change.
“Everything I have learned about the Trust so far tells me not only the importance of our canal network to society, but also how complex it can be to manage - balancing the needs of our different users and partners, from those who live by and on the water, to those who visit and those we work with to deliver projects.
“We also have the incredible support of an increasing number of committed volunteers, and we have established ourselves as a major charity with income growing from increasingly diverse sources.
“It is clear the various pressures we feel from both financial and climate risks are going to continue. Not only are we going to need to be ever more resourceful, we will also need to be proactive.
“We have cause to be optimistic, and a need to be ambitious. The canal network that we care for offers so much to the country. It is our duty not only to care for it for today, but at the same time to ensure it has a bright future that allows it to play an equally important role in society. To do this we must have our eyes wide open for opportunity and innovation in everything we do - and this feels truly exciting.
“To be a steward of our wonderful canals and play a part in shaping and ensuring their future is a challenge, a privilege and a collective endeavour, and I look forward to getting out on the cut and meeting many of you over the coming weeks and months.”
Autumn on the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal
Annual Report published ahead of Annual Public Meeting
Covering the financial year up to the end of last March, you can now read our Annual Report and Accounts. While it may be a long read at over one hundred pages (but half of these are given over to financial statements), it contains many sections that boaters will find interesting.
On page 14 you’ll find out that boat licence income made up 14% of our total income, whilst on page 25, you’ll read that our spend has increased on dredging and vegetation management (activities that we know are important to you). Spend on day-to-day operations, customer service and caring for the waterways has remained largely consistent with the previous year.
Other highlights
More than £60 million was invested in winter maintenance across more than 200 projects, from installing 135 new handcrafted lock gates, to major inspections at landmark sites and repairs to centuries-old bridges, tunnels and wash walls. A further £21 million was spent upgrading 22 of our 74 large, raised reservoirs.
Alongside this, we introduced our Better Boating Plan, developed together with boaters and backed by £3 million of targeted investment to improve navigation. The charity’s dredging programme removed over 60,000 tonnes of material and improved over 40 miles of waterway, while over 6,800 tonnes of waste were collected, of which 98% was recycled or recovered through waste to energy.
We have also been campaigning to secure a sustainable future for the Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal, where new abstraction legislation limits the canal’s water supply. Whilst in the West Midlands, the Report mentions the huge multi-agency effort that our charity was part of to respond to a major pollution incident from a canal-side business in Walsall.
Walsall Canal dam. Credit: Lee Bates
Strengthening our financial resilience
As the nation’s largest canal charity, we benefited from just under three-quarters of a million volunteer hours, with volunteers playing an essential role in repairing and maintaining canals and helping the organisation across nearly all aspects of our work.
We continue to strengthen our financial resilience. While continuing to manage our designated investment fund responsibly, we amended our investment policy to release more of that fund for charitable objectives. This means that, although income was slightly lower than 2023/24, the Trust maintained the uplift in charitable expenditure seen over the past six years.
More than half of our income now comes from property, investments, utilities, donations and other funding – with an ambitious strategy to grow voluntary income tenfold over the next decade. With government funding reducing in real terms, income from boating (including moorings income) exceeded the grant received from government, with each making up almost a quarter of the charity’s funds.
With boats and navigation at the core of our work and recognising the significant changes in the use of the canal network over the last 30 years, the Report references the independent Commission that is reviewing the framework around boat licensing and the service delivered to boaters more generally. The Commission is expected to report in November.
The Annual Public Meeting will be held online at 2.30pm on 20 October. To submit a question email [email protected]
Not entirely atrocious Amy
While the evidence, see above, is overwhelming as to the destructive nature of Storm Amy, there was a silver lining to her clouds. After months of record-breaking dry weather we experienced above average rainfall in September, enabling us to ease some restrictions, and now we’ve had a dramatically wet start to October.
What does this mean for our water resources? Our national hydrology manager, Dr Adam Comerford, has the answers: “The continued rainfall for some parts of the country is a welcome relief for gardeners and boaters alike, and where we’ve seen sustained periods of wet weather our canal pounds and some reservoirs have seen good recovery.
“Sadly this is not a universal picture across the network, some reservoirs have stubbornly shown no appreciable recovery in water levels and holdings, meaning that around 280 miles of the network is unfortunately still closed to navigation due to lack of water availability.
“This situation will improve somewhat with the planned reopening of sections of the Oxford and Grand Union Canals, as communicated via the updated stoppage notices, and we continue to monitor the situation closely as we move through the autumn and approach the winter stoppage season.”
Customer service facilities – what you need to know
As previously mentioned in Boaters’ Update, following consultation with boaters, we published the Customer Service Facility Policy Statement setting out the essential boater customer service facilities (CSF) we will provide (water points, refuse/recycling and Elsan facilities should be provided no more than a day's cruising apart (around 5 to 7 hours) and two days (around 10 to 14 hours) cruising for pump out.)
In summary, we’re focussing on the facilities that matter most to boaters and working towards filling gaps in provision wherever possible. As part of this commitment, the Elsan points, pump out facilities and water points that we manage are set to get a boost over the coming seasons with an additional investment of £4.5 million to standardise and upgrade boaters’ facilities across the network.
In addition, we are continuing to roll out the new recycling bins to keep us in line with the government’s Simpler Recycling legislation that came into force earlier this year. More information can be found here: Rubbish and recycling | Boating services.
Water point facility
Facilities that fall outside of the essential provision include showers, public toilets, washing machines, and tumble driers. As part of Phase 2 of the policy review and implementation, we are offering boaters and user groups the opportunity to lease and maintain shower and toilet facilities. Excluding the small number of showers and toilets where we have already received an expression of interest, and some toilets at key visitor destinations, all other non-essential facilities will be closed from Monday 3 November. Essential facilities housed in the same buildings as closed toilets or showers will remain available.
If you’d like to express your interest in leasing and maintaining a CSF building, please complete our short form.
Ultimately, it’s about making the £2 million we spend on these facilities each year go as far as possible. Because resources are limited, where we have over supply or facilities outside the scope of what we can offer, these are being scaled back so that the money can be put into the keeping the remaining essential facilities open and reliable.
Maintenance, repair and restoration work this weekend
As the above update demonstrates, the network wasn’t built for extreme weather and it does impact its ability to operate which sometimes mean we have to reluctantly restrict, or stop, navigation.
When this does happen, we get notices up on to our website as soon as we can – it’s always best to have a scan while you’re planning your cruise and also just before you set off. You can find out how to get stoppage notification alerts on your smartphone in this article.
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:
If you have any questions about a specific closure, or spot an error in our system, please get in touch.
New trustees appointed to our Board
We're delighted to announce the appointment of Peter Hudson, Angela Cluff and Clare Montagu to our Board of volunteer trustees.
The appointments, for an initial three-year term, were approved by our Council on 24 September 2025. Our trustees are unpaid voluntary roles and lead our decision-making on policy and strategy. They have legal oversight of our wide range of statutory duties and provide direction to our executive team.
Who are the new trustees?
Peter Hudson CB CBE is currently vice chair of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, president of Forces Employment Charity and the Combined Cadet Forces Association, and has been a trustee of the Mary Rose Museum. He is a former Vice Admiral, serving on the Royal Navy’s Main Executive Board, and served as head of NATO’s Maritime Command. Peter has a long held passion for boating on the inland waterways and is a current boat owner.
Angela Cluff is currently trustee of the Migration Museum and co-vice chair of Freedom from Torture. She was previously trustee and deputy chair of Oxfam GB, and vice chair of Care International UK.
Clare Montagu is currently chief executive of Poppy’s and a former trustee of Centrepoint. She is a former senior government advisor and has been chief operating officer of the Royal Trinity Hospice, and director of The British American Project.
Welcoming the new trustees
David Orr CBE, our chair, comments: “I am delighted to welcome Angela, Clare and Peter to Canal & River Trust. Our canals are facing some significant challenges, as age and extreme weather impact the network. But there are opportunities too. Just as canals met the needs of the nation when they were built, today they play an important role in the challenges of modern society.
“The new trustees will play an invaluable part in supporting our charity as we navigate the years ahead. They bring a huge amount of passion, professional experience and knowledge and we’re excited to have them on board.
“I would like to thank Janet Hogben, Dame Jenny Abramsky, and Tim Reeve CBE, who have concluded their time on the Board. They have shown extraordinary commitment, donating their time and expertise over the past nine years.”
Last Edited: 9 October 2025
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