Water management FAQs

If you have been unable to cruise and are in an area that is affected by closures or restrictions, please be assured that any period of reduced movement will not impact your licensing options in future. Please respect mooring time limits when navigation is possible to allow all boaters fair access to moorings, service facilities, and towns.

For more information regarding our boat monitoring process please see our page on how we monitor boat movement..

Please also read our continuous cruiser FAQs.

Where possible, we’ll give at least two weeks’ notice via our stoppage system. However, weather conditions can change rapidly, and occasionally closures may need to happen with less notice.

To ensure you don’t miss important information, you can use our notices to view all closures, restrictions and advice notices. Filter by 'stoppage reason' rather than 'type', as some current restrictions are planned to become closures at a future date. All information will be within the notice.

Check the stoppage notice for local advice and updates. If you live on your boat, we’d recommend returning to your home mooring if you have one and it’s possible in the timeframe. If you haven’t got a home mooring or it’s too far away to reach before closures, move to somewhere you can access essential facilities. Please don’t moor on water points or block facilities as other boats will need to use them too.

We strongly encourage all boaters to start making plans now. This includes:

• emptying waste tanks
• filling up water and fuel tanks
• stocking up on essential supplies
• considering relocating your boat to areas closer to services or, if you have a home mooring, returning your boat to your marina/mooring

Yes, you can move your boat within a pound, provided it is safe to do so. There may be exceptions, for example deep-draughted boats may not be able to move in low water.

If a stoppage leaves you with no reasonable access to water points, refuse and recycling sites, Elsan, or pump-outs, please contact us.

While we expect most customers to make their own arrangements where access remains possible, we will offer advice and, where necessary and feasible, provide support for those in genuine need, based on individual circumstances and local conditions.

Our notices & stoppages system includes both live updates on current restrictions and closures and planned restrictions based on water resource projections.

A map of the affected areas can be found by filtering by reason: ‘Low Water Levels’ and selecting ‘Map View’. We have recorded a short video to help you get the best out of the Notices & Stoppages system, which you can view futher down the page.

We also have a helpful webpage with instructions on how to receive stoppage notifications on your smartphone

Please get in touch at the earliest opportunity and we’ll see what can be done to support you. If you or someone you know is struggling, our welfare team can provide signposting and support.

Now, the fastest way to know what has been issued and where is to sign up to receive these notices as emails that are sent straight to your inbox. We'd strongly encourage everyone, if you haven't already done so, to please sign up.

In addition to these, our website canalrivertrust.org.uk can also show you all of the notices overlaid on a network map, which can be a really useful and easy way to see what is in place.

Now to see this just go to our website and then navigate to boating and click on notices and stoppages. From there you just need to scroll down a little way and again click on the notices and stoppages section.

From the main menu you are looking for filter by reason. And if you drop that list down you will see low water levels near the bottom of that list. If you pop a tick just simply by clicking the gray box, pop a tick against low water levels and clicking apply filters. Now that will sort every notice that is currently issued where the reason is a low water level.

But to see it on a map view again towards the top of the screen, clicking on map view, you now have our network with all the notices displayed. The yellow are advice notices, the light red are restrictions, and the dark red are closures. Now, to see more information, you just simply click on one of the sections, and it will give you a brief summary. Clicking on the title will then take you through to the full detail of that issued notice.

To get back to the network map, just simply press the back button and you can then press the X to close that summary down and you can move on to the next one of interest. It's possible to move the map around. So to pan the map and you can also zoom in using the scroll bar on your mouse, or the buttons at the top of the screen, and again you can move the map as appropriate by selecting - it still works in exactly the same way. It brings you the summary and you can click on the notice for more information.

I hope you found that useful and thank you.

Our website is a great source of information on the latest water resource position and any boating advice/restrictions. Our water management team produces a monthly reservoir watch on the site, which gives details of reservoir holdings across the network. Or, you can visit the stoppages page to subscribe to notifications in a particular area.

Saving water is a team effort and we all have a role to play. However boaters are by far the best partner we have in helping to save water and their support really is invaluable.

Boaters' top tips for helping to conserve water include:

• Share locks where possible and make the best use of the water available;
• Make sure paddles are fully closed once you've passed through a lock;
• Aim for minimal contact when navigating through locks by ensuring gates are fully open as you pass through. Pushing gates open using a boat can damage the gate lining, increasing its leakage.
• Please report any leaks by calling 0303 040 4040 or emailing via org.uk/contact-us

Marina owners, particularly those with hire fleets, can help by encouraging boaters to follow these simple tips.

Please only use the water point to fill up your water tank to use for drinking water and hygiene purposes. Please do not use the water point to wash your boat with a hose or jet washer.

We also need all canal users to be vigilant about vandalism, please call the police if you have any concerns or witness vandalism.

Careful management of our precious water resources is vital. We need to maintain a minimal level of flow in the canal to protect fish and other wildlife and prevent the water from becoming stagnant. Low reservoir and canal levels, coupled with higher temperatures in summer months, can cause problems such as algal blooms and low oxygen levels in the water. In extreme cases, we may intervene to save distressed fish with large scale fish rescues.

The majority of water lost from man-made canals is through leakage via the canal bed and banks. Much of today's current waterway navigation network consists of clay-lined canals which are more than 200 years old. These are not 100% watertight and it would be impractical to fix every leak. However, we are committed to identifying and repairing any significant problems and carries out hundreds of large and small repairs every year.

No, our experience shows that where we've implemented similar restrictions in the past, we've subsequently seen decreases in total lock usage. However, the water resource savings do vary across different canals and between years.

The loss of water from a canal pound due to leakage and seepage is the largest component of water demand on a canal system. Loss rates are at their highest during the summer, when soil is dry and water tables are low. The leakiest part of the canal lining is the top 15 cm (6 inches), because it is continually wetted and dried. It is also subject to holes or cracks formed by burrowing animals and wave action from boat propellers. So, increasing the operational level of a pound, especially in a drought, would greatly increase loss rates. During a drought, we actually aim to run pounds as low as operationally possible to reduce losses.

We have a rolling programme of surveys to monitor the capacity of our reservoirs and these show that generally, over a number of years, siltation hasn't been a significant problem. It is also generally accepted across the water industry that the removal of silt from reservoirs is considerably more expensive than creating new resources or reducing demand elsewhere. This cost means that reservoir dredging is very rarely cost-effective and, particularly so in this case given the results of our reservoir monitoring.

As well as responding to unfolding droughts, we also take a more strategic approach to managing future water resources. Our water management team is responsible for assessing the resilience of water supply and advising the business on the potential impact of proposed canal developments (e.g. new marinas) and investment required to supplement water resources.

We reserve the right to object to or decline canal development proposals on the basis that they may have an unacceptable impact on the existing water supply. Unfortunately, we can never give absolute assurances to our customers about having enough water to get through every drought, regardless of the extent, duration and severity but we will do whatever we can to keep as much of the network as possible open.