Our 2024/25 Annual Report & Accounts highlights the impact of climate change on our canal network, the rising cost of maintenance, and the significance of future funding cuts.
Summary of 2024/25 Annual Report & Accounts
Despite rising material costs, additional environmental regulation and extreme weather, 2024/25 saw us deliver wide-ranging canal maintenance whilst prioritising services to boaters and communities.
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 with boaters and backed by £3 million of targeted investment to improve navigation. Our 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 threatens water supplies. It was also part of a multi-agency response to a major pollution incident from a canal-side business in Walsall.
David Orr, chair of Canal & River Trust, said: “Maintaining this nationally important infrastructure, keeping it safe and open, in turn allows the canal network to contribute positively to significant national challenges and policy goals, such as water security, protecting and enhancing biodiversity, and providing access to open space and nature for millions of people.
“We have engaged closely with the Labour government, aiming to build a new partnership exploring how we can contribute to their policy goals, while also enabling the canal network itself to remain resilient and a net contributor to the economy.”
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 us across nearly all aspects of its 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 our charitable objectives. This means that, although income was slightly lower than 2023/24, we maintained the uplift in charitable expenditure seen over the past six years. There were increases in spend on dredging and vegetation management across the network, whilst spend on day-to-day operations and customer service, and caring for the waterways, remained largely consistent with the prior year.
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 exceeded the grant received from government, with each making up almost a quarter of the our 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, we set up an independent Commission to review the framework around boat licensing and the service delivered to boaters more generally. The Commission is expected to report in November.
David also highlighted the contribution of former chief executive Richard Parry, who stepped down in July 2025: “Richard’s contribution to the Canal & River Trust becoming an established and admired national charity has been phenomenal. He has led the organisation through both challenges and achievements; his dedication to unlocking the benefits of the canal network for all could not have been greater. I would also like to thank colleagues and volunteers, and welcome our new chief executive, Campbell Robb, who joins us next month.”
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Caring for our waterways
We spent close to £49 million on around 80 large maintenance and repair projects, and our skilled teams of carpenters, stone masons and bricklayers completed further construction projects, at a cost
of around £20 million.
With over 10,000 individual assets and structures including bridges, lock gates, aqueducts and reservoirs, many of which are up to 250 years old, it is a challenge to keep our ageing waterways in a safe condition.
Our busy waterways provide millions of people with access to outdoor space and nature, great for wellbeing and happiness.
Helping nature to thrive
Our canals and rivers provide green corridors in the heart of our busiest cities, linking fragmented wildlife habitats and supporting biodiversity.
Keeping history alive
We care for what is widely recognised as the third largest collection of listed heritage buildings and structures in England & Wales and our canals represent the finest example of industrial heritage in the world, attracting visitors from across the globe.
We have continued to diversify our income streams to support the financial resilience of the Trust. Our trading and investment activities continued to make a significant contribution to our work, for waterway maintenance and repairs.
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