Canal charity plans repairs at 159 UK sites

The Canal & River Trust has announced its winter repair and conservation programme, which aims to preserve the UK’s historic canals and maintain this vital infrastructure for boaters, local communities, and visitors.

The programme, running from November to March, targets quieter periods on the canals to reduce disruption to navigation. The work, which forms a significant part of the charity’s ongoing maintenance activities, will involve repairs and conservation efforts at 159 sites across England and Wales.

The Canal & River Trust is a charity that looks after 2,000 miles of waterways. The charity has faced increasing challenges in recent years, amid cuts to its government funding, complaints over its service levels and hikes in licence fees.

Key activities in the winter repair and conservation programme include the installation of 129 new lock gates, crafted in the trust’s workshops. These gates will be fitted at locations such as Caen Hill Flight on the Kennet & Avon Canal, Hatton Flight and Braunston on the Grand Union Canal, Acton’s Lock on the Regent’s Canal in central London, as well as on the Rochdale Canal and Birmingham Canal Navigations. Additional tasks include masonry repairs to bridges, tunnels, and wash walls, addressing leaks to preserve water levels for navigation, and inspections of critical infrastructure such as Islington Tunnel, York Street Aqueduct in Burnley, and Gloucester Lock.

Malcolm Horne, chief infrastructure and programmes officer, says: “Our canals are as important now as they were at the height of the Industrial Revolution – but age and increasingly frequent and extreme weather events are taking their toll, meaning our work to repair and maintain the canals is needed now more than ever. The work we are carrying out this winter is part of our ongoing investment programme to keep canals alive and accessible for navigation for boaters, as well as acting as linear parks benefiting local people and wildlife.”

Alongside the winter repairs, the trust is progressing with a multi-million-pound reservoir repair programme to enhance the resilience of water supplies for the canals. This includes ongoing work at over two-thirds of the trust’s 71 reservoirs, some of the oldest in the country. The programme also addresses repairs along canal beds, walls, and locks to prevent water loss from the network’s ageing structures. The trust continues to invest in dredging throughout the year to maintain navigation conditions.

The trust’s Notices & Stoppages pages will update with information on works affecting navigation.

Fund Britain’s Waterways (FBW), a coalition of organisations representing hundreds of thousands of users and supporters of inland waterways, says British waterways are ‘falling into disrepair’ because of inadequate funding.