Editor are things really looking up now?

Editorial A little optimism?

The editor wonders if a quick scan of the pictures in this issue gives grounds for hope - and ponders the impact of a ‘do not demolish’ culture...

I might be daft but I’m not stupid (*)

In what way might that claimed lack of stupidity manifest itself? Well, for starters I’m not going to claim that things are ‘back to normal’, or even ‘getting back to normal’ - given that exactly a year ago I was already backtracking on the optimistic ‘back to work’ theme that I’d been planning, and which had hit the buffers as the Covid rules tightened up again. I’m also not going to risk using expressions like ‘post-Covid’ or suggesting that there isn’t every chance that it will turn around and bite us on the collective arse if we start thinking that way. And I’m going to repeat that information in this issue about forthcoming working parties should be treated with caution and checked, as the situation could change quickly.

But having got those disclaimers in first, I have to say how refreshing it was to see the pictures from the late summer ‘trial’ WRG Canal Camps, particularly the set that Mikk Bradley sent from the Montgomery Canal, and realise that yes, a few things were starting to happen that we’ve really missed over the last year and a half.

Look at the front cover for starters: a happy bunch of Duke of Edinburgh’s Award volunteers shovelling gravel, having fun, and genuinely helping a vital project - next year’s rebuilding of School House Bridge - to move forward. And on the inside front cover: one of them being trained to drive an excavator by WRG’s one and only Adrian Sturgess. Oh, and on the subject of Adrian, on the ‘Infill’ pages (which have returned after a couple of issues when I just struggled to find anything amusing to put in the mag at all) a jolly pic of his balloon-bedecked birthday digger to show that the notion of having a laugh on camp is alive and well alongside the serious business of canal restoration. And on the back cover, a picture of our friends in KESCRG on a weekend dig on the Wey & Arun - with a London WRG weekend to follow - while on the ‘Coming Soon’ pages, KESCRG have gone so far as to pencil-in a list of weekend working party dates for the next few months, rather than the few occasional ad-hoc short-notice digs that the regional / mobile groups have managed to organise when possible over the last year. Also on the back cover is the famous WRG North West Sales Stand. And on this page, there’s even a picture of your editor laying bricks at Geldeston, after as near a brick-free year as I’ve Dave ‘Evvo’ Evans had since the early 1990s. The editor helps finish the Geldeston Lock chamber wall: see p14

No, we’re not in ‘the new normal’ (whatever that is) yet, and we’re certainly not throwing caution to the wind, but as we head into that time of year when we plan for next summer’s camps, I think (fingers crossed, touch wood) we can do it with just a little optimism.

But what of the wider world of canal restoration. Are there grounds for optimism there too? There are a few current developments that show that this might just be the case...

Firstly, as we cover in our Navvies News pages, the saga of the planning application for houses at Froghall which would destroy the prospects of ever reopening the Uttoxeter has reached a satisfactory conclusion, with Staffordshire Moorlands District Council throwing out the application at its September meeting. That is extremely good news, not just for the Uttoxeter but also as a precedent for any other restoration schemes where there are fears that councils might bow to the need for new housing, even at the expense of overruling planning measures which have been put in place to protect a canal restoration.

But if you’re looking for something that will translate into actual physical progress in the not-too-distant future, look further south. We’ve already shown you (see Navvies 307 back cover) the stockpile of pre-cast concrete sections which will soon form the first ever main line railway / canal crossing reinstated as part of a UK waterway restoration at Stonehouse, where the Birmingham - Bristol main line embankment currently blocks the Stroudwater (part of the Cotswold Canals). Well it looks like it may soon be joined by one of the first canal crossings of an existing motorway to be built as part of a UK waterway restoration. Where the M4 blocks the Wilts & Berks Canal just south of Swindon, a bid to a Highways England fund for reversing damage caused by road construction in the past (the same fund which paid £4m for the A38 / Cotswold Canals crossing at Whitminster - see various recent issues of Navvies) has secured £42,000 for a feasibility study for a new bridge. The Wilts & Berks Canal Trust is hopeful that this will be followed by a six-figure sum to pay for detailed design work, and then by the full funding to build the bridge in around 2023-24. And if that sounds like overoptimism on the part of the Canal Trust, there’s something of a statement of faith in the future of the canal in the fact that a new canal bridge is currently under construction to carry Wharf Road (which is being diverted as part of road alterations in connection with an access road to a new housing development) over the new route of the canal on its way to the M4 bridge. See diagram below.

And looking further ahead it seems there’s a chance that one or both of these restorations could finally benefit from a funding source that’s often looked like a good way to pay for canal reopenings, but so far has never really delivered. And that’s domestic water supply works - usually in the form of water transfer schemes from wet areas to where the water’s needed. Of 15 major water projects which have been given the official green light for further development, two could provide big benefits for canal restoration. The first is a transfer scheme to take water from the Severn catchment to the Thames - and one option for this is to restore the entire eastern length of the Cotswold Canals from Sapperton Tunnel to the Thames as the transfer channel. The second is the proposal for a large new reservoir to hold supplies (possibly Swindondelivered by this M4 transfer scheme) motorway Access roadnear Abingdon. for newThis would block housingthe original route of the Wilts & Berks Canal, but a Planned bypass route new canal would be pro- route vided as part of the reservoir New canal bridgework. In addition under construction Originala new emergency canal routedraw-down channel (all new reservoirs need a way of emptying them Plans for getting the Wilts & Berks Canal across the M4 south of Swindon

Planned new canal bridge under M4 motorway Wharf Road

in a hurry if necessary) leading for several miles to the Thames would be built to navigable standards to provide the replacement for the eastern length of the canal, whose original route through Abingdon is no longer available.

Grounds for optimism, perhaps?

Finally, I’ve seen a few things published recently highlighting one of the largest (but up to now one of the less obviously high-profile) contributors to world carbon dioxide emissions: construction - and in particular making bricks, steel and cement. No, don’t worry, I’m not going to suggest that canal restoration is a significant contributor to global warming! But there are a few calls - most recently in a report from the Royal Academy of Engineering - for the Government to “stop buildings being demolished” - and to reuse existing buildings more. Or where that’s not practicable, to increase the amount of reclaimed materials reused.

Now I’m not going to go into the rights, wrongs and practicalities of these arguments that’s another discussion. And for now it’s just a case of ‘experts muttering” (as our Chairman puts it) rather than Government policy (as per Biodiversity Net Gain, see below) - but that may change. So I’ll point out (not for the first time) the way that savvy canal societies have always managed to turn all sorts of unhappy environmental / economic / social outcomes into ways of getting canals reopened. Everything from the high unemployment of the 1970s-80s (think job creation schemes on the canals) and the decline of the UK’s heavy industries (derelict land grants for waterway restoration) to our tendency to fill our planet with trash (landfill tax reclamation cash for canal projects). I don’t doubt that they will find a way to do the same, if and when it comes to dealing with an official aversion to demolition.

Yes, I can see that (like getting your canal structures listed by Historic England) it could be a twoedged sword. What if you really need to knock down, say, a housing estate that a less enlightened authority than Staffordshire Moor- Froghall 2005: hope for more Uttoxeter reopenings in the future lands has allowed to be built on your canal’s route - but everyone’s up in arms about knocking down houses, because every house that’s demolished means another one’s built somewhere else, and it all adds to greenhouse gases... But think about Biodiversity Net Gain. That’s the recently introduced statutory requirement for developments (and canal restoration work will often qualify as a ‘development’) to leave the natural environment in a measurably better state than it was beforehand. This could be - and no doubt sometimes is - seen as yet another headache for canal restorers. But it can actually help a canal restoration to get funded (by providing a good opportunity to achieve the necessary ‘net gain’ for an adjacent commercial development which is going to get built anyway, with or without a canal.

Perhaps, in a slightly similar kind of way, we might just end up in a position where the ability to reuse existing structures and therefore reduce the amount of demolition and new construction is one more good argument in favour of incorporating restoring a length of canal into a development scheme, rather than whatever other use the local authority had in mind for the land.

And on that happy if convoluted note, I’ll leave you.