Communications from CRT

The main issue of interest today has been the result of my enquiry to CRT last week. I’d asked why, when the Alrewas River Section is in flood and navigation stopped, the Fazeley office doesn’t publish a stoppage notice in the usual way. These notices get emailed out to everyone who’s subscribed to receive them and also appear if you search for them on the CRT website here.

It’s quite common in the weather conditions we’ve been having to see notices about the Trent, Severn or S Oxford canal being stopped by high water levels, but never for the Alrewas section. Instead, the Fazeley office just tweets it, fine for those who can be bothered with Twitter but no use to the rest of us.

I initially approached Damian Kemp at CRT HQ, who passed it on to Sarina Young, Customer Service Co-ordinator. She very helpfully replied yesterday, but our fun with the power supply meant I didn’t get round to thanking her until today.

She told me that Central Shires Waterway Manager Darren Green at Fazeley had told her that this section, like the Soar, comes in and out of flood so quickly that there isn’t time to put up a stoppage notice. This may well be true for the Soar, but in ten years of boating around Alrewas we’ve never seen it like that for that river section.

It’s often quite high, but once it’s actually on the red bit of the level marker (at which point CRT padlock the locks shut so they know what it's like) it tends to stay there for several days at least. If you are approaching from upstream, there’s a pleasant choice of Fradley or Alrewas itself to stop at and wait it out, but coming from downstream all the moorings between Barton Turn (where there’s the first warning notice board) and Wychnor Lock are right alongside the very noisy A38.

What’s more there are lots of us in marinas here and hereabouts, above and below Alrewas, who want to make cruising decisions on the basis of whether that section is open. At the moment, if we want to know, we have to either ring the Fazeley office or use the good offices of folk on Canal World to tell us the state of the river.

It would be really good to have the same notice service as boaters on the rest of the system and I plan to keep asking about this until we do. In the meantime, I’ve thanked Sarina for her prompt and courteous response.

If you agree with me, you can email Darren.Green”at”canalrivertrust.org.uk (replacing the “at” with @ as usual) and tell him so.