Kennet & Avon Waterways Partnership covering Kennet & Avon and Bridgwater & Taunton Waterways

Tamsin Phipps Chair

• The Waterway Partnership • The year 2016/17

Partnership Members

Governance / Chair – Tamsin Phipps

Rob Dean

Emma Fearnley

Terry Fell

John Inman

Ken Oliver

Richard Watson

Sam Worrall

Mark Evans (Waterway Manager, CRT)

2 Roles of the Waterway Partnership

Include… • Developing an aspect of the integrated Business Plan • Champion the waterway • Influence and engage local stakeholders • Encourage fresh insights • Encourage volunteering • Engage waterway users, young people, and new audiences and encourage waterway based activity

Our Year 2016/2017 delivered by Volunteers, Staff and Partnership Members

Caen Hill - Destination

Develop a community garden Pond Events adjacent to the dipping/canoeing

Working with Offices – share the space and cycling events and routes Caen Hill

Car park and Signage and way walkable from town marking Heritage Nature Trails – trails etc health walks Interpretation boards on the side Cafe/shop Jubilee Wood Welcome Boat The Admiral Trip Advisor

Trip Advisor Certificate of Excellence for:

• Caen Hill • Bradford-on-Avon Wharf • Wharf

A must see “Really amazing place to visit, relax, exercise and become a friend of the canal through the Canal and River Trust” Fantastic “I've driven by these locks for years so after a weekend in the Cotswolds and on route home we decided to visit. Wow!! If you love rivers, boats, scenery with peace you've got to stop here”.

6 Leaflet Development

• Earlier this year we updated the Caen Hill Flight leaflet which had proved very popular in the past. This is now available for visitors to the area. Please find your copy here today.

• Following the official opening of Claverton , we have also produced a leaflet to promote this special site and the Open Days.

7 Jubilee Wood - Our Future Heritage

Jubilee Wood Planted Areas Spring 17

GPS Survey Mar 16: Under planted by approx. 3.4 ha

Volunteer Lead and Support: 5,000 Trees Planted 15/16 14,000 Trees Planted 16/17 50% of wood only really just started

Successful Forestry Commission Inspection Jun 17 Jubilee Wood cont:-

• Planting • Mowing around trees and rides • Hedge laying, cutting back hedges • Ditch crossings • Beat Up (assessing tree densities and health) • TLC of plants (clearing tubes/spirals) • Installation signage, gates, picnic benches, viewing area • Clearing of steps, entrances

9 Caen Hill - ‘silt curtains’

Aerial view of the flight showing an intact (top) and broken (bottom) silt curtain. You can see the difference in the water quality either side of the curtain and how the water quality is starting to change in the pound with the broken curtain. 10 The Admiral - Welcome Boat

Visitor numbers vary from over 100 a day at weekends to about 20 on wet weekdays

• visits from 3372 adults and 1548 children - total of 4920 during this season • visitors coming from all over the world. • The Admiral is manned by a team of 10 volunteers who have spent about 700 volunteer hours on the boat.

The Admiral - Welcome Boat

The children particularly enjoy the many craft activities on offer, some families returning several times if they live or are camping nearby.

12 Help for Heroes – Caen Hill

13 Help for Heroes Bridge 99 – small bridge with a big history

Bridge 99 is thought to be the first skew bridge built by the canal engineer John Rennie. It played its part as a World War II defence and most recently served as a therapeutic tool for injured service personnel.

Veterans from the Heritage Heroes project worked with colleagues and volunteers from Canal & River Trust to restore its brickwork and parapet. Each veteran received specialist lime mortar training to do the work.

14 Before and after

Bridge 99 February 2017 before restoration and after July 2017

15 Signage for Bridge 99

16 In real life….

17 Lead Volunteers’ Group

• 240 Volunteers relate to CRT through task managers with the addition of their own forum

• The forum gives opportunity to support functions to widen understanding of roles.

• Lead volunteers provide a vital two way communication with CRT

• As volunteers themselves the partnership members are keen to be seen to actively support all volunteers on our waterways.

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Founding Lead Volunteers

Lead Lead Lead Volunteer Volunteer Volunteer Keeper Lock Keeper Lock Keeper David Spencer Martin Gillate Kim Daniels Bath & Bradford Crofton & Caen Hill on Avon Newbury

Lead Lead Taskforce Lead Volunteer Lead Taskforce Volunteer Welcome Station Volunteer Volunteer Derrick Hunt Deborah Wray Welcome Trevor Clark Bradford on Bradford on Avon Station Bath Avon & Dundas Thelma Edwards Volunteering

Volunteering takes on many forms

• Towpath task Force • Welcome Stations • Volunteer Lock Keeping • Office Work

Overview of numbers 44,000 volunteer hours April16 March 17 10% increase in hours for this year.

20 Volunteer Lock Keeping

They help people operate the locks in certain areas, provide visitors with local knowledge. • Help prevent damage to locks. • Approximately 100 VLKs • Over 8 locations

Lock 66 – Potter’s Lock 21 Volunteer Activities - Bath Towpath Taskforce

Just in the last month or so Bollards have now been installed in Bath on the Widcombe Flight.

The Bath team were also successful in clearing nearly 1km of Himalayan Balsam!

Clearing the triangle above Darlington Wharf. People can walk through this area without getting covered in wet grass and you can see the bug hotels again!

22 More volunteering - Devizes Towpath Taskforce

The Devizes Taskforce have been coming out most weeks and carrying out various tasks.

Eg clearing reeds prior to the fishing event (these were transplanted to the new Pondipping platform).

The group have also completed the PPM on five locks on Caen Hill as well as carrying out additional tasks such as painting and maintenance on many of the benches.

23 Just a few more - Bradford on Avon

The last block being placed into the Hen’s Orchard Wall!! Just the remaining topping stones and fence to be installed now. Congratulations and thank you to the BoA team who have carried out this huge project.

The team also removed the drainage covers and cleared the drain at the wharf which was flooding.

Ted Ellis has completed an audit for the Bath to BoA mooring stone project. The aim of the project is to bolt down any coping stones that have mooring rings on them – so they don’t get pulled into the water by boats.

24 The last block - Hen’s Orchard Wall

25 Crofton- Newbury - Reading

26 Other works Urbis Boards

Chris Wilding and Dave Newman

27 Celebrating our volunteers

• Derrick Hunt, John Webb, Tim Stenner, Colin Edwards, Richard Wren and John Inman have all contributed over 2,000 hours here on the K&A. • They are some of the 40 volunteers Trust wide that have been awarded a special gold badge by the Trust this year.

28 Signage

We have completed signage audits in a number of locations to de-clutter, replace broken or missing signs and install new Welcome Boards and Points of Interest boards.

Claverton Pumping Station

• The Claverton Pumping Station is a rare surviving example of the technology of the Late Georgian – Regency – period. • The pump started work in 1813. It uses the power of the River Avon to lift water up 48ft into the Canal above. Burning no fuel and making no waste it is the ultimate in environmentally friendly technology.

Next Open Day - 30th September2017

Work Boat and Training

• John Inman (fully qualified MCA Boatmaster Passenger Vessels and Workboats) and is also an RYA Inland Waterways Instructor.

• Extremely useful for a wide variety of waterway tasks especially offside vegetation

• The contractors occasionally use a volunteer run workboat to support their activities.

31 Photography Competition

This spring we launched our first photography competition. We had over 140 entries from the K&A and B&T.

The competition is part of our ‘Year in Focus’ project, which has included: • An i-phone camera workshop with Help for Heroes • A photography workshop with young people. • Now we’re developing ideas for a photography archive project over the autumn.

32 33 Runner up: Captain Cat by Fiona Turnbull

34 Winner: Golden Bridge by Bread and Shutter

35 Visitor Moorings Review (K&A)

In 2014/15 we worked with a group of key stakeholders a review has taken place of all the visitor moorings between Bath and Caen Hill. In 2017/18 a review of or visitor moorings on the eastern end of the K&A has commenced with key stakeholders.

36 Open Day – BoA

Another important part of our work is to raise the profile and understanding of the Canal and River Trust amongst the general public and to work with all parts of the organisation .

BoA lock is the busiest lock on this canal and third in the country but the busiest wide lock 8000 lockings 553 million gallons just to pump the water back up above the lock Need to supply the back [umping chain all the way to the summit Make up for leakage, evaporation etc

• Heritage • Engineering • Operations • Volunteers 37

Some interesting finds….

38 Bradford on Avon Open Day

We had over 1,000 people attend the Open Day in February, which was quickly followed by a 300 local school children!

39 Trails

A variety of trails both on and off the water have been developed and are available on our website. There will be more developed in the coming year. These assist with promoting the waterways and health and wellbeing by providing information as to what is available to do. o Trails o Walking trails To follow o Nature and cycling trails

Other Partnership projects include

• User Guide • This guide has 6 chapters that each focus on a stretch of the K&A. The guide is available in 2 versions: Eastbound and Westbound.

• Arts on the Waterways programme. • Specific health and well being objectives, addressing issues such as isolation and mental health within the boating communities.

41 Customer Services – Dredging

• A survey of the Long Pound between (KA-062) and Devizes (KA-087) in June 2016 which confirmed the requirement for dredging. Of the twenty five km surveyed, only nine passed the compliance threshold. Furthermore, there are 11 notifications recorded for dredging related issues within these lengths. The majority of these report encroaching reeds affecting the navigation. • Further to consultation with stakeholders, and a review of the survey data and notifications it is proposed to carry out dredging on two sections: • • Wooton Rivers Lock to Bridge 116, (Stowell Park) ie proposed continuous dredge for 6,187m • • Bridge 129, Allington Swing Br to Bridge 133, Bishops Canning Swingbridge ie. proposed continuous dredge for 3,918m.

42

Dredging

43 Dredging

44 Vegetation

• The partnership has worked with the contracts team to look at prioritising the cutting of the off side vegetation. • Work undertaken by volunteers on off side vegetation has made a huge difference to many areas. • The eastern end of the canal was prioritised for the winter of 16 / 17.

45 Vegetation

46 Vegetation

47 Share the Space

We continue to roll our the Share the Space, Drop your Pace message.

Our Devizes event included a Facebook Live feature, which reached over 20,000 people. The Newbury event was covered by BBC radio’s breakfast show.

48 Youth Engagement

Working with Wildlife Trust and Splash Wiltshire to provide holiday activities for young people.

Including junior lock keeping, boat trips, fishing and photography workshops.

49

Youth engagement cont…

National Citizen Service and Gloucester College students

50 Adoptions

We have 13 adoptions

51 Heritage

• Dundas Wharf and Aqueduct have now been awarded the Red Wheel, our forth on the Waterway

52 Million Hands Initiative

• On our waterway, we are working with a number of Scouts groups including

• Scout Link Group came to . • 2nd Scouts painted their local lock • Pang Valley Scouts, Reading • 1st Shinfield Scouts, Reading

53 Let’s Fish

• “Let’s Fish” event at Caen Hill. Canoeing was also available and both were a success. Over 100 people got involved in the activities.

• ‘The day was a hugely successful both in terms of numbers of fish caught and smiles on the children’s faces.

54 Events

We attended the Festival of Nature for the first time this year. Over 3,000 people attended. The Explorer education activities went down really well, and we worked again with Wildlife Wonder to offer photography workshops.

. • Floating Markets • Newbury Waterways Festival • Canal Fete • Shows etc

55 Events

• Floating Markets Christmas 2/3 December BoA • Waterway Festivals • Cycling events • Walking events • Canoe Races – Devizes to Westminster • Fishing • National initiatives

56 Bridgwater & Taunton Canal

57 Bridgwater and Taunton Canal

• Business plan • Adoptions - IWA, YMCA and Friends of Chard Arm – IWA have adopted 3 stretches. • Signage audit underway • New leaflet to promote the Canal and its natural and cultural heritage • Tesco Bags for Help Pill Box projects • Working closely with the IWA on the B&T to find solutions to the weed problem.

58 Bridgwater & Taunton Chard Arm Adoption

• Residents have restored the pill box using traditional lime mortar techniques. They have also installed several bat boxes. • The pond shown here is a representation of the old Chard Arm canal. It is considerably shallower than the nearby canal and therefore offers an additional habitat to wildlife in the area. Volunteers have planted the pond up with a variety of native plants.

59 Waterspace Study

• The Water Space Project has established the data and information required to develop an evidence based plan for investment to revitalise the river and across Bath. It covers 16 miles of waterway along the River Avon and from Dundas through to Bath and Hanham. The research has focused on 5 key themes: • assets (land ownership); • moorings/boating; • environmental issues; • regeneration/development opportunities and leisure • recreation and leisure

60 Working with other Partners

A key part of the work is to develop partnerships at local and national levels. • Local councils • National sporting organisations • Waterways interest groups/Trusts • Local communities • Schools/youth groups • Event organisers • Get Berkshire Active • Environmental Groups/charities • Businesses • Inland Waterways Association • Kennet and Avon Canal Trust

61 Mark Evans – Waterway Manager Green Flag

63 Love our waterways

64 This is a unique opportunity to work together to create a positive future for our canals and rivers, and the people who value them

We want to make a real difference in our Partnership area

Thank you for coming