Canal Boat — February 2018

canalboat.co.uk Canal Boat February 2018 9

NEWS

TOWPATH

TELEGRAPH

THAMES BOATER FINED

Keeping a boat on the River Thames

without registering (licensing) it cost the

owner almost £800 in overdue payments

plus a surcharge, after the Environment

Agency took him to court. Dylan

Gardener-Collins pleaded guilty and was

given a conditional discharge and ordered

to pay £597.65 in respect of unpaid fees

plus a £200 surcharge.

STOUR TRUST BACKS CRT

Following the Inland Waterways

Association’s support for the Canal & River

Trust’s bid to take over the Environment

Agency rivers (see Page 6), the River Stour

Trust has also backed the move. The Trust

said it “welcomes this as a means of

improving the Stour for all users of the

waterway” and that it shares IWA’s

concern about “potential long-term

closures of EA waterways in East Anglia”.

CHASEWATER WORRIES

The waterways system’s largest reservoir,

Chasewater in the West Midlands, has

been supplying no water to the canals

since spring 2017, the Inland Waterways

Association has highlighted. A valve fault

spotted on a routine inspection by the

reservoir’s owners Staffs County Council

led to the water feed from the reservoir into

the Anglesey Branch of the BIrmingham

Canal Navigations being declared unsafe.

The Canal & River Trust is in discussions

with the council about alternative

temporary arrangements; in the meantime

the shortfall has been covered by borehole

pumping plus Rotton Park Reservoir at

Edgbaston – which is now close to empty.

ANGLIAN RIVER WORKS

Following the launch of winter works

schedules on the Canal & River Trust

waterways and the Environment Agency’s

Thames region, the EA Anglian Rivers

programme has now begun. A £1.4m plan

sees work taking place at the River Nene’s

Wadenhoe, Woodford, Weston Favell,

Titchmarsh, Cotterstock, Ashton, Orton

and Denford locks during the winter.

BOATERS who declare a mooring on their licence
application but don’t use it, and those who use a
mooring but don’t declare it, are the targets of a
“mooring validation” initiative by the Canal & River
Trust working with marina and mooring operators
around the system.
Working with industry body British Marine and the
Association of Waterways Cruising Clubs, CRT has
carried out a pilot with 12 mooring operators. Following
a routine check, CRT gave each operator a list of boats
sighted that weren’t recorded as mooring there and

boats recorded as mooring there but not seen at the site.

These lists of discrepancies were reviewed by mooring

operators and then used to correct out-of-date records

or to contact boaters for an update on their status.

The Trust is now rolling out the scheme, inviting all

mooring operators to sign up to take part, by contacting

CRT on 030 3040 4040 or via its website. Interim Head

of Boating John Horsfall described it as “good news for

mooring operators”, enabling them to “check that the

boats on their moorings are the ones that are meant to

be there”.

£1.9m Wendover reopening put on hold

CRT checks up on moorers

AS THE Wendover Arm’s restorers

work out how best to deal with a

major setback (above), some 20

miles further north another group

also restoring a branch of the Grand

Union Canal are celebrating

confirmation of European funding

enabling an important bridge

rebuilding project to go ahead.

In what may well be one of the

final EU grants to canal restoration,

£72,039 from the LEADER rural

development funding programme

has been awarded for rebuilding the

missing first bridge of the

Buckingham Canal, near where it

leaves the Grand Union Main Line at

Cosgrove. Together with a £10,

legacy grant from the Inland

Waterways Association’s

Northampton branch, this will

enable the Buckingham Canal

Society’s volunteers to begin work

on the bridge.

The arch was demolished in the

1970s but the abutments survive,

investigations indicate that it is

capable of being rebuilt and work

should begin this year, Completion

will lead to the opening up of 300

yards of rewatered canal, and

pave the way for major funding

bids for the more difficult lengths

that lie beyond.

...but Buckingham boosted

BUCKINGHAM CANAL

A LOTTERY funding bid to reopen a further mile and
three quarters of the Wendover Arm, already approved
in principle, has been withdrawn after unexpectedly
serious contamination was discovered.
The £1.9m project aims to complete the rebuilding of
the dry length of canal from the current terminus at
Tringford to Aston Clinton, beyond which the route to
Wendover remains in water. An application for £1.6m
from the Heritage Lottery Fund was given ‘stage 1’
(initial) approval in 2016, meaning that barring serious
problems, ‘stage 2’ (final) agreement should follow once
the rest of the funding was confirmed.

Unfortunately a short section at Little Tring, thought

to be infilled with harmless domestic rubbish, has

turned out to contain “noxious material which would

need to be removed to a specially licensed area at great

expense including a hefty landfill tax”. The costs will be

well beyond what had been budgeted, and with the

Lottery deadline of March 2018 looming, the Wendover

Arm Trust and Canal & River Trust have had no choice

but to withdraw the current bid.

However the two trusts say that much preparation

work done so far will still be relevant and need not be

repeated, and that they will “concentrate on solving

these challenges so that a fresh submission for funding

could be submitted in due course”.

WENDOVER ARM