Off the wall: new funding sources

feature Outside of the box

Where might restoration groups look for the big funding they need in the future? We look at three unlikely-seeming sources: roads, rails and water...

Restoration outside of the box...

...or off the wall. Or blue sky thinking. Or left-field. Or whatever this week’s buzzphrase is for something that seems to have come from nowhere but might just turn out to be the next big thing. In our case, something which could be the next big source of waterway restoration funding (like, for example, the Millennium Fund turned out to be, some 20-plus years ago, or more recently the National Lottery Heritage Fund).

Or on the other hand, it might turn out to be more like a damp squib. But certainly not entirely, at least in the case of the first of the three possible funding sources we’re looking at, because it’s already produced £4m for canal restoration which is being spent, even as I type this, on putting the Stroudwater Navigation near Whitminster (part of the next phase of the Cotswold Canals restoration) back under the A38 main road.

On the road to restoration... And that first possible source is road construction mitigation measures. You may recall that we’ve already mentioned it a couple of times in Navvies in connection with the A38 / Cotswold Canals crossing mentioned above. Basically, as part of its RIS 1 Road Investment Strategy, a multi-billion pound investment plan for the years 2015-20, a sizeable pot of money was established to provide grants for work to mitigate or remediate damage to the environment by road-building in the past. And as it happens, the reason that there’s a mile of the Cotswold Canals missing between Eastington and Whitminster, meaning that a new length will be needed including new crossings of the M5 and A38, is because it was destroyed in the early 1970s when the M5 was built.

So a bid was put in, and duly attracted a £4m grant which is paying for the twin bridges being built to take the canal under the A38 roundabout. This is actually one of the more expensive bits of the restoration the M5 crossing itself will involve diverting the canal under an existing river bridge. It’s also all tied up with the Phase 1b bid for £10m from the Heritage Lottery Fund to complete the rest of this length - which we’re waiting for the final decision on right now.

But that’s by the by. The point is, they asked for £4m and got it. And meanwhile in the Black Country, a second bid for a canal has been successful: at Titford Pools, where

the elevated M5 crosses the canal on concrete stilts, and the rainwater run-off from the motorway has been gradually silting the canal basin up for years, a grant from the

same fund is paying to clear it and to carry

out environmental / nature conservation improvements too.

There will be a further RIS 2 roads programme for the forthcoming years, and a further pot of money for mitigation of past damage. Are there many more canals which could benefit?

There are limitations. It’s an Englandonly thing (a shame, it would have been nice to reinstate the six miles of the Monkland Canal through Glasgow which were destroyed by the M8), and it’s specific to the ‘strategic road network’, which limits it to motorways and major roads. But there could be some suitable candidates. It’s something that our parent body the Inland Waterways Association has picked up on through its Restoration Hub, which is looking at how it might work with canal societies to support the process, engage with Highways England, and continue to demonstrate to the authorities that canal restoration can deliver the benefits to justify the larger sums of money which could be available.

As the first stage of this, the IWA Restoration Hub has carried out an initial exercise in identifying some possible sites which might qualify. A first draft includes:

The Ashby Canal northern reaches, crossed by the A42 north of Measham The Buckingham Canal, blocked by the A5 east of Old Stratford The Chesterfield Canal, whose Norwood Tunnel was plugged with concrete when the M1 crossed it The Cromford Canal, crossed by the A38 west of Butterley Tunnel The Derby Canal, blocked by the M1 near its east end, by the A50 at Swarkestone and by the A52 at Spondon The Grantham Canal, blocked by the A1 embankment on the edge of Grantham, by the A46 just outside Nottingham, and by the A52 and other roads near Nottingham - meaning a diversion is likely The Ipswich & Stowmarket Navigation, whose Claydon Lock was lost in the construction of the new A14 The Lancaster Canal, blocked by the M6 at the top of Tewitfield Locks and again further north, as well as by the A6070. The Lapal Canal, where the M5 cuts through the original Lapal Tunnel (which is proposed for replacement on a new route) The Lichfield Canal, crossed by the A5 with a diversion proposed, and by the A38 in Lichfield (with another diversion, already partly excavated) The Manchester, Bury & Bolton Canal, crossed by the M60 The Shrewsbury & Newport Canals, cut twice by the A5 either side of Berwick Tunnel The Wilts & Berks Canal, blocked by the M4 between Swindon and Royal Wootton Bassett, and by the A419 east of Swindon

Please note that I’m not offering that as an exhaustive list - just a selection based on a first draft (so don’t think that IWA is ignoring you if your example isn’t listed), concentrating on those projects that Navvies readers will be familiar with. But when looked at in the light of the £4m already agreed for the Stroudwater, if gives an idea of what might just be possible regarding dealing with some of the trickiest and most expensive obstacles to restoration on a lot of the projects that we in WRG have been involved in.

On the gravy train?

Having looked at how road-building, which in the past has resulted in so many challenges for canal restorers, might (rather unexpectedly) help the canal restoration movement, it might be natural to ask if the railways (the bane of many waterways rather longer ago) might also help. Well, I’m afraid that this will be the shortest part of this article because it’s not looking great at the moment.

The obvious possibility might involve HS2. In the early stages it looked set to destroy large chunks of the sections of the Chesterfield Canal between Killamarsh and Staveley which were already under restoration, already restored, or set to make progress in the short-to-medium term - and the associated planning blight may well have resulted in the loss of a significant Lottery grant (we’ll never know if the bid would have succeeded, as the threat from the railway meant it had to be withdrawn). And other schemes including the Ashby Northern Reaches and the Lichfield were also threatened by new rail crossings at difficult levels, making restoration more complex. page 21

But more recently, the eastern branch of the railway’s second phase (which is likely to be the last part to be built, and still might not happen at all - unlike the first phase from London to the Midlands where the main construction has started) has seen a re-think about how it would serve Sheffield, resulting in a change of route which means its main line misses the Staveley-Killamarsh section of the Chesterfield completely. So (other than the National Lottery Heritage Fund no longer having the cash available that it might have given the canal in the past) we’re almost back to where we were in 2012.

Actually in theory it could be rather better than that, because HS2 too has a budget for mitigation of damage - and the sort of projects it could support might just include canal restoration. Not to mention that where it crosses the Lichfield, contruction of the first phase of the railway will now involve creation of a length of canal, to replace a section which will be destroyed. This rather unfortunately includes the demolition of the new Cappers Lane Bridge, only built within the last 15 years, which will never see a boat. And it looked like the A42 / Ashby Canal crossing mentioned in the list above might also have benefited, as HS2 will run through this area too - so if it’s being rebuilt for the railway, might that provide an opportunity to put the canal back at the same time? But at the same time, HS2 has also put the dampers on a housing development at Measham which was due to reinstate an isolated three quarter mile length of canal.

Oh, and the latest from Chesterfield, where the main remaining issue (since the HS2 route change) is that a railway maintenance depot at the end of a siding off the main line is planned to be built on or close to the canal at Staveley, unfortunately HS2 Ltd has ning application to restore the rest of the length of canal in the Chesterfield Council area (including this site). But George Rogers (Chesterfield Canal Trust’s full-time Development Manager - and wellknown WRGie) tells me that the Trust believes there’s a workable solution, that HS2’s response to the planning application clearly states they support the overall aims of the Canal Trust, that there have been political assurances that HS2 won’t prevent the restoration – and that basically this is just a minor skirmish while they argue over the detail.

But no, all-in-all, new railways aren’t looking like the saviours of canal restoration right now (although that could change). On the other hand, water supply routes...

Testing the water... Using canals to move domestic drinking water supplies around the country from where they’ve got plenty of it to where it’s needed is an idea that’s been around for a long time. And in fact it’s actually been done

in one or two places: a fair amount of Bristol’s drinking water comes down the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal, while the use of the Llangollen Canal to bring water from the upper reaches of the River Dee to quite a bit of Cheshire is one of the reasons why the canal stayed (just about) open to navigation in the 1950s, even though it had been legally abandoned along with the Montgomery, the

just objected to the Canal Trust’s planShrewsbury & Newport, the Huddersfield and

CRT

various other railway-opened canals by the 1944 LMS Act. It’s also why novice (and some notquite-so-novice) narrowboat steerers can find the Llangollen’s locks a bit tricky - the water supply function means there’s a stiff current coming down the

enlarged bywashes (lock overflow channels), which can knock you off course just as you’ve got your boat lined up nicely for the notoriously narrow locks. And if your boat’s close to the depth limit for the canal, you’ll find it slow going when you’re heading upstream into the current in narrow sections, especially in the tunnels and the four miles of navigable feeder leading up to Llangollen.

And that sums up two of

Martin Ludgate

The Llangollen Canal: note the oversize bywash on the right - if not well-designed these can push boats off course

the issues. On the plus side, having water

transfer as a secondary function could make the case for keeping a canal open - and, as we shall see, for restoring a derelict canal to navigation. But on the minus side, it can also make the canal more difficult to navigate. (And as any real boater will tell you, there’s nothing like a bit of navigational or other boating difficulty to liven up a late evening canalside pub conversation... and put other people off cruising (*) that canal for the next couple of decades... “You’re planning on taking this boat up the Thames Berks & Andover Canal?” - sharp intake of breath...)

That might seem a flippant comment (largely because it is), but a suggestion about 30 years ago that some of the midland canals might be used as a water transfer led to some serious concerns about the impact on the North Oxford and Coventry canals. Boating readers will be aware that where these two canals meet at Hawkesbury there is a stop-lock (a shallow lock built to separate different canal companies’ water supplies) raising the level by a few inches from the Coventry to the Oxford. The water transfer plan would have involved another two or three similar locks built at intervals of a few miles on what is now a long level canal, each lock accompanied by a pump, to maintain the gradient necessary to keep the water flowing. Whether these would have been seen as an inconvenience or an extra bit of interest, they would have implied quite a current flowing in the canal, the idea didn’t find favour, and it was dropped - although more recently a scheme to use the southern Grand Union Canal has also been mooted.

Another concern might be that if boaters are in effect sharing their canal water supplies with domestic customers, there’s the potential for disagreements about who gets priority at times of drought. And if it came down to it, you’d struggle to argue the case for keeping the canals open for leisure boaters ahead of supplying the country with drinking water - even if the canal authority had carefully conserved its supplies, while the water supply company had let its water run to waste through leaky old pipes. But perhaps that’s getting a bit hypothetical.

Anyway, using existing canals for water transfer might seem a bit of a ‘can of worms’ - but what if it were the best (or only) chance of getting the sort of really large amount of cash that could complete one of our major canal restoration schemes within a reasonable timespan?

I’m thinking of the Cotswold Canals here. The South East is seen as short of domestic water supplies, there’s a surplus in the South West, and restoring the canals might just be a better way of shifting up to 300 million litres of water a day than pipes and pumps.

This isn’t exactly a new idea either - it’s been around for a few years. There have been calculations which indicate that pumping the water up a conventional pipeline from the Severn to Sapperton Tunnel, but then letting it run through a rebuilt tunnel

and via a restored canal downhill to the Thames at Inglesham, would be much cheaper than the alternative of a pipeline all the way. A decade ago Cotswold Canal Trust put the costs at £1bn for a piped scheme, compared to £250m for the canal - and that includes restoring the tunnel and eastern sections of the canal to navigation. And in combination with the restored and (fingers crossed) soon-to-be-restored sections at the west end, that reopens over three quarters of the total length of the canals.

The water supply industry hasn’t so far seen it quite that way. It disagrees with those figures: two years ago it was still considering the options, and didn’t even include the canal idea in its consultation. CCT commented that “The costings, and other assumptions, used by Thames Water for the various water resource options appear biased towards the solutions they want to promote. The key costing figures have not been made available and are redacted in the reports. It is entirely possible that the Cotswold Canals Scheme is more cost effective than those included in the preferred programme.”

But that’s water under the bridge (sorry). The decision still hasn’t been made, all options including the canal are back in the mix for the water companies to develop, Government regulatory body Ofwat is making all the right noises about encouraging “innovative solutions”, getting folks to “look more broadly”, bringing in “third parties” besides water companies and so on. And some results from the options development process are promised in 2021.

And crucially, Ofwat is moving to a position where “better public value” is a more important consideration when choosing which option to take, rather than simply lowest cost. So even if Thames water continue to produce figures (which CCT dispute) that favour its pipeline ideas, when you consider the public value as compared to 20 miles of glorious restored Cotswold Canals, it would be a bit of a philistine who would plump for a buried pipe.

To conclude: I’m not holding my breath waiting for anything in this canter through some off-the-wall ideas to make it into the real world in the form of new sources of big lumps of cash for canal reopenings. But I’m not betting against any of them happening either. And that’s before we’ve considered restored canals as flood attenuation storage resources, restoration works as post-Covid recovery employment sources, and whether the Montgomery with its Welsh / borders location stands to get more from the Mid Wales Growth Fund putting money into Welsh projects or from a UK Government apparently “keen to emphasise the Union”. Interesting times ahead...

Oh, and just remember: not a single one of these restoration schemes which might be in the running for the large dollops of dosh that could be sloshing around would ever have got to that point, if a bunch of enthusiastic canal society volunteers hadn’t Martin Ludgate

kicked-off the restoration work years ago.

diary... still no diary?

In the light of the Covid-19 situation, WRG’s practical restoration activities remain largely curtailed although some groups have re-started work.

Where’s the Diary? You’ll be used to turning to the centre-spread of Navvies for the start of six pages detailing all the forthcoming WRG, IWA, canal society, CRT and other working parties around the waterways network. For obvious reasons, we didn’t include one in the last three issues: initially pretty much everything apart from the odd bit of essential safety-related work had been stopped, and then even though the easing of the lockdown had led some local societies to re-start work, WRG and the other mobile groups still weren’t up and running yet... So what’s happening then? The short answer for WRG is currently ‘not a great deal’. But the long answer is rather more complicated. We realise that even with the shorter lead times possible with electronic distribution of this magazine for most readers, the changing situation may mean this is out of date by the time you read it. But see below for a roundup of what’s been cancelled, and what could (depending on how bad the currently worsening Covid infection levels and/or increasing restrictions get) still be happening. Canal Camps: WRG had already not only cancelled the entire summer programme of week-long canal camps, but also reluctantly taken the decision to cancel the autumn camps, on the grounds that accommodation, travel to / from site and catering were areas which could not be organised in way that we were happy was safe, practicable and in line with Government rules / guidance. Unfortunately with the situation getting worse rather than better, this has also now put paid to the WRG Bonfire Bash / reunion weekend and the Christmas camp. Incidentally for anyone who had booked on, if camps are cancelled, anyone who has booked will be offered a full refund. WRG has been looking to pretty much transfer the entire summer 2020 summer Canal Camps programme en bloc to 2021 - but obviously that depends on a reversal of the currently deteriorating situation, and/or some new ways of organising our camps. We’ve just started a discussion on the latter, and hope to report in the next Navvies - see also Mike Palmer’s Chairman’s Comment on Pages 8-9. Mobile groups’ weekend working parties: The mobile groups had also up to

late summer been cancelling working parties on an eight week rolling programme, for similar reasons. However although the groups’ usual mode of operation is still impracticable as regards accommodation thanks to the ‘rule of six’ (not to mention issues of transport and catering), our London WRG, WRG NorthWest and WRG BITM regional groups have successfully run ‘socially distanced’ weekend work parties. You can read reports of the first two of these elsewhere in this issue. Unfortunately London WRG have now decided to hold fire on having any more digs as a result of worsening national Covid-19 infection rates, increasing restrictions and doubts about the suitability of tents for winter dig accommodation, while Kescrg and WRG Forestry have decided against a return to working parties for now. BITM and NorthWest still have one weekend each planned, but please contact their organisers to check. IWA and canal societies: Many societies have begun one-day working parties with precautions in line with guidance, and will welcome new volunteers. See their websites / Facebook pages. CRT working parties: The Canal & River Trust has begun to re-start its own volunteer work, initially with individual volunteers such as lock keepers and litter picking. See canalrivertrust.org.uk for details See wrg.org.uk for the latest on what’s on, what’s off and what’s postponed page 25