What’s the point?

Given the threat to our existing canals from possible public funding cuts, why are we trying to open more canals? Martin suggests some answers...

What’s the point in restoring canals...

That may seem a curiously negative question for Navvies to be asking, but bear with me for a minute. Firstly, I’m not suggesting that Navvies or its readers are actually asking that question. It’s more that there are people out there who are already doing so, and it would help if we have some answers ready for them.

And secondly, there’s a second part to it: the full question is “What’s the point in restoring canals when we can’t even afford to maintain the ones we’ve already got”. And that’s a question that inevitably gets asked whenever the existing network of canals goes through a bad patch. Which it is at the moment...

When I say “a bad patch” I’m not particularly talking about the state the canals are in now. Yes, there is widespread criticism by boaters of the state of the network – but I’m not going to get drawn into the debate about whether that’s because it’s genuinely going down the pan with more and more evidence of deficient maintenance everywhere you look, or whether it’s simply that these boaters are largely from the ‘grumpy old person’ tendency, successive generations of whom would have us believe that the canals have been continuously getting worse for the last 40 or 50 years (and must have been perfect in the 1970s...)

No, such arguments are of less importance compared to what might happen in the future. The Canal & River Trust (which is responsible for the majority of the navigable network) is tied in to a 15year Government funding deal which ends in 2027, and which for its final five years lacks any kind of inflation-proofing. So from now onwards, with inflation shooting up, what it will actually pay for is falling in real terms - and it could have lost a quarter of its value by 2027. And with the Government contract providing roughly a quarter of CRT’s total income, that’s a big hole. But it gets worse...

As I mentioned, the funding deal ends in 2027. And there’s no guarantee of any cash at all after that. Cutting it off completely or reducing it significantly could blow a hole so big in the canal network’s funding that it would put its future at risk. CRT’s Chief Exec said as much at the Trust’s recent annual public meeting.

We hope that won’t happen – negotiations with Government department Defra have been going on for more than a year, with CRT, WRG’s parent body the Inland Waterways Association and other organisations all doing their best to make the case for continued public funding on the basis of all the benefits that the canals bring to the public, not just to the boaters who contribute through their licence fees. A decision should have been made in the summer, but it’s been repeatedly delayed thanks to the monthly change of prime minister and associated reshuffles...

We hope they conclude that the canals are worth funding. But if they don’t (or if the funding they eventually agree is much reduced), we need some answers to my original question if we’re to continue restoring canals at all. I have a few suggestions. Feel free to suggest more – or indeed to shoot me down in flames. The letters page is yours...

Firstly, the money for maintenance of the navigable network and for restoration of derelict waterways isn’t comparable and doesn’t come from the same sources. The funding for CRT has come from Government department Defra, which has rarely provided cash for canal restoration in recent years –the big restoration grants have come from the various Lottery funds, local and regional government, and specific national government ‘pots’ such as Highways England’s fund for repairing environmental damage from new road construction. If we were to tell the National Lottery Heritage Fund or the Towns Fund or the Levelling Up Fund that we don’t want their millions for canal restoration any more, it’s not like they’ll hand to CRT to keep the Rochdale and Huddersfield canals better maintained instead. No, they’ll (quite rightly, as per their remit) give it to steam railways or town centre regeneration schemes or environmental projects or whatever.

Secondly, we’re on a different timescale. Look back through the 40-50 years that some of our main restoration schemes have been going, and you’ll come across various other occasions when the existing national network’s finances were badly stretched. There was the ‘Tunnels Crisis’ of the early 1980s, when a whole series of tunnel closures, as 200-year-old structures showed their age, cut the network in various places – Blisworth, Netherton, Wast Hill, Preston Brook and more. Eventually the Govenment realised it had to provide extra cash, and did so.

Similarly with the large backlog of engineering maintenance that was building up in the 1990s: once again, the Government eventually cottoned on to the situation and provided the wherewithal to start tackling it.

These crises might have seemed like the end of the world at the time, but compared to the (often frustratingly) slow pace of canal restoration they seem today like relatively short-term issues. It’s a good job we didn’t stop restoring (say) the Droitwich or the Montgomery in the 1980s or 1990s on the grounds that “we can’t maintain what we’ve already got”.

And finally, looking at some of the interesting things happening in canal restoration – the linking-up of the lengths of the Wilts & Berks in Swindon; the extension of the Montgomery towards the Welsh Border; the Derby’s new tripboat operation in the city centre – they’re all appearing in the press as ‘good news stories’. They’re exactly the sort of stories that can actually show what a good thing waterways are in general, and actually help to make the case for seeing the entire national network as a valuable asset that must be preserved.

So keep the faith, folks. Believe that we will succeed in making the case for finding a way to keep the network maintained – if not immediately (although IWA’s Waterways for Today report is having a good go at that –see our last issue) then in the fullness of time.

And in the meantime, don’t stop restoring canals.

Martin Ludgate