Campaign against new marina

FOLLOWING our story of the opposition to the new massive 600 berths marina on the Oxford Canal, comes news of a 'Stop the Monster Marina at Onley' campaign against the proposed development.

The first well attended meeting took place at Braunston Marina, with speakers pointing out that the already overcrowded Oxford Canal would be brought to a virtual standstill at weekends and in the holiday season if still another marina of such capacity was allowed.

Objection

Daventry District Council have confirmed that over 100 letters of objection have already been received, and it is expected that with the campaign now getting underway, there will be many more.

For not only is the Oxford Canal amongst the most congested in the country, next only to the Llangollen Canal, it suffers water shortages, and so it is felt that it could not support hundreds of more boats being so located, especially as new marinas have already come on line.

Empty berths

As reported in narrowboatworld, the developer used the argument for his proposal that there was a need for between 1,500 and 2,000 extra marina berths within the Daventry area before 2015 to meet demand. This is not true, for at the moment it is estimated that there are around 300 empty berths on the Oxford Canal.

The proposal for this, and other marinas being built on the Oxford Canal, were encouraged by the then British Waterways marina team, who however, used misleading statistics to encourage developers, statistics that are now obviously being shown in their true light.