Chairman's Report - April 2009

The following report first appeared in the IWA Stoke-on-Trent Branch magazine "Knobsticks"

In February, I had the opportunity to take Chisbury down part of the Cheshire Locks with a rather special crew. How many of you can say you have had the Manager of British Waterways Wales and Border Counties Unit, Julie Sharman, and her Customer Operations Manager, David Baldacchino, acting as your crew? Add to this committee members Steve Wood, Gillian Watson and Julie Arnold as well as the Chairman of the Trent & Mersey Canal Society, Malcolm Turner, and you will realise what a distinguished occasion it was. The cruise was the outcome of discussions at which Julie and David thought it would be a good idea to have “hands on” personal experience of the flight, after we had drawn a number of matters of concern to their attention.

We could only manage half the flight, as the lower part was subject to a stoppage, but every paddle on every lock from 54 up to 41 was operated, and the locks filled and emptied. Of the 94 paddles, only just over half – 57% - were found to be satisfactorily easy to operate.  17% were judged stiff, 13% hard, and another 13% very hard. British Waterways staff are now looking into the reasons for this in order to improve the situation. We are meeting Jim Taylor and Terry Dale of British Waterways in April to take this forward.

The experience strengthened our resolve for a joint IWA/T&M campaign to put pressure on to keep these locks well maintained, and to bring back into use as many of the closed locks as is feasible. Some of this, of course, would be a very long term project, but there are four locks which could be a relatively ‘quick fix’ if we can drum up sufficient support. As we go to press, the Branch is drafting a leaflet which will be first distributed at the final AGM of the Western Region of the IWA, and then at the AGM of the Trent & Mersey Canal Society in May. This explains the historical background of the flight and the duplication of all but two locks in the 1830s. It goes on to explain how several locks were filled in before 1965, with the Thurlwood steel lock being dismantled in the 1980s.

Currently, 10 of the original 48 duplicate locks are closed or filled in. Whilst no-one has actually complained to BW about delays on the flight due to congestion, a boat will encounter bottlenecks at busy times and will take anything up to 2 hours 30 minutes longer to get down the flight than in the 1830s.

• What are we doing?

BW have already agreed to support us and to improve maintenance on the flight. We are enlisting the power of the voluntary sector to bring the four closed locks back in to use, and to seek funding to facilitate this. We are mounting this campaign jointly with the Trent & Mersey Canal Society to provide evidence of demand. From time to time, we intend that members of the societies will visit the locks and hand out or complete questionnaires for those using the locks. We are also to have early discussions with Nicola Lewis-Smith of British Waterways to look at possible external sources of funding.

• What can you do?

We cannot conduct this campaign without substantial support from you, our Members. As a first step, we need to quantify what support there is among you, and what you are prepared to do to help, so we ask you to complete the postcard enclosed with this edition of Knobsticks and return it to me.