De-humanising canals

CANALS and the river navigations of the UK, were mostly built at a time when ‘steady' was a brisk walking pace and ‘very fast' was the speed of a galloping horse, writes Orph Mable.

This has been the case for the majority of time over the last 200 plus years. These were speeds that people could associate and feel comfortable with. Today, this is not the case, and life is so much faster and more hurried.

Quality of the construction

With the unavailability of machinery to make the task of building the canals ‘easier', it was manual labour that was used. This could have been a slow process but labour was relatively cheap and plentiful, so the canals were built with surprising speed. Although built by hand, the canals have survived for a couple of centuries due in general to the quality of the construction implemented by the craftsmen and labourers involved.

Throughout the heyday of canals and through to post World War I, the canals continued to be maintained in a traditional way, utilising the individual skills of the lengthsmen and company maintenance staff. The structures, (locks and moveable bridges) were operated in most cases by trained and conscientious staff, minimising careless use and effecting prompt repair to minor wear before serious long term damage could occur. Slowly this has changed to requiring vast amounts of equipment, vehicles and tiers of office staff.

Disappearance of skilled professionals

Fast-forward to today, we have seen the disappearance of skilled professional Lengthsmen, full time Lock Keepers and now Bridge Operators. All in the drive to reduce operating costs. I seriously wonder if it does! Because there are few skilled, knowledgeable people on the ground every day, noticing small changes, minor damage and other changes, only obvious major change/damage is noticed by those who flit around the system in lovely white vans, often too late to prevent large scale work being necessary.

We are seeing large funding being available to ‘improve' towpaths (make them better for fast commuting and time-trials). We have seen headline-making bat and water vole facilities. We have seen thousands of pounds spent on flags and bunting. We have seen expensive court cases. We have seen expensive changes to logos and signage. We have seen committees, voting, extra layers of needless management and office moves. I am sure that we have seen lots more areas where money has been spent (wasted?) on things that are of no direct/indirect benefit to the wonderful waterway system.

Not seen effective and knowledgeable people

What we have not seen, in reality, is effective, and knowledgeable people being put onto the towpath, on locks and bridges, into maintenance and dredging teams and into a position to effectively manage and improve the system. No amount of emails, web pages, customer meetings and advertising will remove the need for effective people on the ground, on the canal and riverbank, doing the day-to-day ‘little things' that make a difference.

The precarious state of our canals and navigations is getting beyond just worry, so much so, I am sure that we will see permanent closures in the not too distant near future, due to failures that are beyond the funding capability of Canal & River Trust to repair. Would somebody tell me how, under the current management and funding this sorry state of affairs can be turned around?