Marinas spark canal concerns

A group dedicated to maintaining and improving a Midlands canal is concerned at the growing pressure to open more marinas.

Members of the Trent and Mersey Canal Society fear that putting more boats on the 90-mile canal will result in long queues to get through the locks along its route through Staffordshire. The concern follows the approval of a new 580-berth Mercia Marina at the southern end of the canal on a commercial trout fishery at Willington, near Burton upon Trent.

Society chairman Malcolm Turner is urging members to protest at any new marine developments that are put forward along the 230-year-old canal between Runcorn and the River Trent in Derbyshire.

Mr Turner said there were already long queues in the summer at Fradley Junction, near Lichfield.

"If just half of the usual five per cent of boaters who leave a marina over a weekend head for Fradley, they can expect to wait an extra three hours to go through the locks.

"Increase that figure to just eight per cent over a bank holiday weekend and you can add at least another hour to that wait."

This year has also seen the opening of a new marina at Great Haywood, near Stafford, with another also planned for Aston-by-Stone on the canal which was built by engineer James Brindley.

Another society officer Dave Brewin said there had also been a new marina built at the northern end of the canal at Billinge Green.

He said the Willington development, the biggest inland marina in the country, would be a "super marina" and would be on top of existing marinas at Sawley, Shardlow, Stenson, Shobnall, Barton and Kings Bromley.

"These existing marinas already result in an unacceptably high level of boating activity on the southern Trent and Mersey for the spring and summer months," said Mr Brewin

He added: "I believe that we have now reached that point on the southern Trent and Mersey and that the society must object in the strongest possible terms to any further plans for expansion to the current network of marinas."

The society is to press British Waterways to upgrade the canal and provide extra moorings.