NEWBURY’S canal is falling into disrepair so quickly that large parts of it could be closed within a decade, canal users have warned.
Despite more boats cruising the Kennet and Avon than at the height of the industrial revolution, boaters claim that the Government has starved them of cash needed to protect the infrastructure.
Weirs, locks and banks have been left crumbling as a British Waterways funding crisis has seen repeated delays to crucial maintenance work.
Sluice gates at Bone Mill, behind B&Q on the A4, are in such a perilous state that they could collapse at any minute, according to Rob Dean, chairman of Newbury’s branch of the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust.
He said: “If that sluice gave way now, and it could do so in five minutes’ time, we’d have a real problem with all the boats moored in the town. It would flood half of east Newbury.”
Long term question marks over the Government’s commitment to funding the canals could mean repeated closures of waterways over the coming years, he warned.
“Something will fail, like a lock or a weir, and they won’t have the money to do anything until the next financial year.
“The whole canal restoration project is now in reverse.”
The canal will celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2010, but large parts of it were closed in the 1950s. A campaign to reopen the Bristol to Reading canal culminated in a £25 million lottery grant in 1996.
The completion of restoration was finally celebrated in May 2003 with a visit from the Prince of Wales.
Now boaters fear the funding crisis could mark the canal’s second long decline.
British Waterways spokeswoman Susie Mercer admitted that the agency was suffering a £20 million a year shortfall.
She said: “We do share the view of the canal trust that at the moment, the level of funding isn’t sufficient to maintain the standard that we would like to see maintained.
“We don’t feel that parts of it will be closed within a decade though,” she added.
Newbury MP Richard Benyon, recently appointed vice president of the Kennet and Avon canal trust, said: “There’s great concern from MPs across Parliament about the funding of British Waterways.
“It’s not being sensationalist to say the canal could become un-navigable in the next decade. It is a real worry.”