Please give us answers about River Trent navigation

IWA East Midlands chairman David Pullen shares the following emails he has sent to Canal & River Trust regional director Phil Mulligan in respect of the situation on the River Trent:

I’m devastated that, despite the heads-up in my email of February 24, 2020 (as below), we now have a situation on the River Trent that is likely to prevent even the most intrepid of boaters from risking the possibility of running aground. Therefore here are a series of simple questions which can be answered clearly and succinctly without caveats and conditions:

• Please clarify the extent of CRT responsibility for maintaining a safe navigable channel on the Trent.

• Was the response to the boater who wrote to Towpath Talk an accurate indication of the new CRT policy on the Trent (this could be summed up as “You, (the boater) pay for your licence, and CRT will choose whether to provide a navigable channel.”).

• Please confirm that if boaters foolishly choose to utilise their boating licence on the Trent, that CRT absolve themselves of all responsibility for the outcome and the boat owner will have to pay again to be recovered or rescued.

On the CRT East Midlands Partnership we worked hard to encourage inland boaters to navigate the Trent. I’m left feeling rather foolish as once again the Trent is the poor man’s relation when it come to maintaining navigation. I look forward to your answers please.

Email of February 24:

This is a heads-up that it is almost certain that there will to be siltation problems on the river navigations this summer due to the abnormally high flows.

I therefore ask that your operational team are asked to address the high risk of siltation at lock ‘tails’, specifically on the tidal River Trent at Cromwell, West Stockwith, Keadby and potentially Torksey.

Please be aware that after the last significant and prolonged extreme flow conditions in autumn/winter 2012/2013 Cromwell Lock, in particular, was closed for the first half of the 2013 summer cruising season due to a silt bar at the ‘tail’ of the lock.

The river flows since September 2019 have been far higher and more frequent than in 2012/2013, and so your operations teams should be anticipating difficulties in navigating these tidal lock approaches when the Trent returns to ‘normal’ summer flows and levels, and putting in place the appropriate contingency plans.

David Pullen, chairman, IWA East Midlands Region