Major Canal & River Trust works are under way in Leicestershire to replace ageing lock gates and protect historic waterways from climate pressures.
Leicestershire’s waterways are undergoing major maintenance and preservation work to keep them navigable as part of a £1.3 million repairs and restoration programme.
The Canal & River Trust is replacing lock gates at Gas Pipe Lock and Pywells Lock, near Fleckney, and at Gees Lock, near Glen Parva, on the Leicester Line of the Grand Union Canal.
Specialist teams are installing new gates where the existing structures have reached the end of their 25-year lifespan. Alongside this, brickwork within the locks is being restored to ensure they remain watertight and safe for navigation, while also helping to protect the historic structures from the growing impacts of flooding and drought.
Work at Gees Lock has been made possible thanks to funding raised by players of People’s Postcode Lottery. This support is enabling the removal of old gates and installation of new ones, each individually designed and hand-built by skilled craftspeople using traditional techniques at one of the trust’s specialist workshops.
Linny Beaumont, regional director for the Canal & River Trust, said:
“Winter is the time of year when our skilled in-house construction teams are out delivering the larger maintenance and engineering projects that are essential to keeping our 250-year-old canal network open and alive.
“Leicestershire’s canals are centuries-old working heritage and, with rising costs, climate pressures and more extreme weather events, the challenge of keeping them in good condition for navigation has never been greater.
“While millions of people use and visit the canals every week, perhaps they don’t stop to think about what it takes to look after them – or what we would lose if they were gone. Our canals cannot take care of themselves; keeping the nation’s canals open and safe requires millions of pounds. And the reality is, we cannot keep them alive without the support of boaters, our volunteers, supporters, and the wider public.”
The Leicestershire works form part of a wider, multi-million-pound programme to maintain the UK’s canal network. This winter, the Canal & River Trust is carrying out 137 projects across more than 100 locks, as well as work on bridges, tunnels, embankments, sluices, culverts and canal walls across 45 canals and rivers nationwide.
