editorial Boats in Navvies?

Several mentions of boats and navigable canals in this issue remind us that it isn’t just about long-abandoned waterways being rescued from dereliction Boats? What are they doing here?

Flick through this issue of Navvies and you might spot that in place of some of the usual pictures of jungle and dereliction gradually being transformed into working canals with boats on them at some point in the (perhaps distant) future, there’s rather more than usual in the way of pictures and descriptions of canals that are already open and in use by boats.

Firstly on our inside front cover page, London WRG and WRG Forestry are seen cutting back overhanging trees and vegetation from the Chelmer & Blackwater Navigation. It’s in support of the work by our parent body the Inland Waterways Association (through its subsidiary Essex Waterways) to maintain this waterway, having saved it from abandonment when the original company went bankrupt some years ago. Next on pages 12 and 13 there are calls for volunteers to support events taking place on the navigable network - the Cleanup which helps to keep the quieter parts of the Birmingham Canal Navigations network from getting choked with rubbish and falling into disuse, and the IWA Canalway Cavalcade festival at London’s Little Venice. Please consider supporting these two worthwhile events.

And then, on pages 14 to 18 there are two accounts by folks involved in canal restoration of trips they took on the working canal network in connection with their activities - an epic trip up the Grand Union with a temperamental dredger, and a set of paddle gear that took two decades to go by water from one former part of the Shropshire Union network to another part of the same system.

So is there a connection? Smartarse answer: “yes, there are 3000 miles of connections, and with our help it will one day be 3500 miles...” Serious answer: not really. I’m not suggesting that WRG and other restoration groups are deserting the restoration world for the navigable network. It’s a coincidence really that all these things landed in the same issue of the magazine. But I do think it serves as a useful reminder of what we’re actually restoring the canals for. Yes, I know (I’ve had to explain it often enough) that you can’t just say “But they’re for boats!” and expect the National Lottery Heritage Fund / Levelling Up Fund / HS2 remediation budget / whoever to cough up £20m for your canal. To get your cash you have to make common ground with a lot of other causes, and demonstrate a lot of other wider benefits (and IWA has produced reports that really hammer home how good and how many these wider benefits are). But ultimately almost all restoration groups (while fully supporting all these wider benefits) see full reopening to ‘normal’ inland waterways craft - typically modern narrowboats and cruisers with a sprinkling of more historic craft - as the long-term aim. So I have a slight concern when I see that local nature conservation supporters seem, once again, to be lined up together opposing the use of powered craft on the Montgomery Canal once it’s restored into Powys. “Couldn’t they use horses to pull them?” they ask.

Leaving aside the sheer impracticability of that particular suggestion, it concerns me that the Monty was the subject of some long and hard debates between different groups over a couple of decades, which eventually thrashed out a solution in the form of a Conservation Management Plan. It was a compromise for everyone concerned, it terms of the numbers of boats that would be permitted to use the restored canal, the mitigation works to compensate for any nature damage they caused, the regeneration benefits and so on. Everyone had to cede a certain amount, but the result was what had seemed impossible: a document that everyone from all sides could sign up to. Now, it seems like - with the section of canal to Crickheath about to open, construction of the new School House Bridge about to remove the next obstruction beyond there, and £14m of Government funding promised towards getting through to Welshpool - one group appears to no longer support the Plan.

I’m optimisic that sense will prevail and it will prove possible to restore the Monty in line with the agreement. But I’m concerned about the principle elsewhere. Is there any point in signing up for such agreements if - once one side has put decades of effort into reopening a canal - another party can decide that its side of the agreement need no longer apply.

On a different note: in this issue you can also read about a new housing scheme that’s going to pay to repair the major breach which shut the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal in 1936. It’s drawn some criticism, even within the canal movement, because it’s development in a green belt area, which led to the council refusing it planning permission. But it went to appeal and the Government Planning Inspector overruled the decision. And right now it’s hard to see how the breach repair could have been funded other than with something like this.

Again, I’m thinking more of the wider view. A decision where the Inspector specifically mentioned canal restoration as an exceptional reason for approving a proposal may set a powerful precedent and could be a boost for restorations elsewhere. Especially when considered alongside the case on the Uttoxeter Canal a couple of years ago where a housing scheme was refused permission because it blocked the canal’s future restoration, and was therefore counter to the Local Plan. “Restore a canal and you’ll get the go-ahead; destroy one and you won’t”. OK, that’s an oversimpli fication - but you get the idea.

But to go back to boating, and the national navigable network, it seems we’re not much nearer to finding out how much (if any) public funding the Canal & River Trust will get towards maintaining the waterways once the current (approximately) £50m a year contract runs out in 2027. And with inflation eating away at the value of the existing grant, the canals are already in for some lean times, possibly followed by a nightmare scenario in four years with the grant either scrapped or severely cut. The best guess is that we might know “around Easter”. If the worst comes to the worst, CRT says it neither anticipates ‘handing back the keys’ and leaving the Government to pick up the pieces, nor actually closing down any canals other than as an “absolute last resort” - and even then, it’s governed by the legal framework with a duty to maintain almost all of the navigable network (all except those classed as ‘remainder waterways’ under the 1968 Act). But realistically how can they survive? Going back to my earlier thoughts, I said “I’m not suggesting that WRG and other restoration groups are deserting the restoration world for the navigable network.” I’m not suggesting they are now, but might they need to in the future? CRT these days seems a lot keener on volunteers than its predecessors British Waterways were, and its Chief Exec has said that “volunteers will improve things under any scenario” regarding the Trust’s worsening financial shortfall.

Which leads us back to the usual issue. How do we keep restoring canals, if we’re struggling to keep the navigable network going? And what’s the point? But it also leads us to the contrary view that “It’s a good job we didn’t abandon canal restoration during the dark days of [insert whatever financial crisis you want to from the last 50 years] - otherwise the [Wey & Arun / Rochdale / Cotswold / Droitwich / whatever ] would have been lost beyond hope by the time the better times eventually arrived.” What’s the answer? Send your suggestions to the editor.

And lastly, rather than end on that gloomy note, we have finally got a 2023 canal camps programme planned, just in time for this issue. See you on a Canal Camp this year!

Martin Ludgate If we’d stopped restoring canals during earlier financial crises, would it have put paid to any reopenings once the better times returned?