Canals & Waterways
Dredge and Restore • Proper Funding • Liveaboard Rights
Canal Freight • Towpath Access • Mooring Reform
Boat Safety • Continuous Cruiser Protection • Facilities
The Principle
Britain built approximately 4,000 miles of canals during the Industrial Revolution. They carried the raw materials that built the modern world. Today, roughly 2,000 miles remain navigable, managed by the Canal & River Trust on a shoestring budget. They are used for leisure, for living, for freight potential, and for flood management. They are also neglected, underfunded, and increasingly treated as an inconvenience rather than an asset. BUILD will treat them as what they are: national infrastructure.
Pillar 1: Dredge and Restore
1.1 — National Waterway Restoration Programme
The Environment Agency effectively ceased routine dredging of rivers and flood channels in the 1990s as a cost-cutting measure. The consequences have been catastrophic. The 2014 Somerset Levels floods were directly worsened by decades of silt accumulation that reduced river capacity by as much as 50%.
BUILD will establish a National Waterway Restoration Programme to systematically dredge and restore all navigable rivers, canals, drainage channels, and flood defence systems in England. This includes the approximately 2,000 miles of canals managed by the Canal & River Trust, all Environment Agency main rivers, and locally maintained ordinary watercourses. Dredged material will be processed and reused as aggregate, fill material, or planting substrate for reforestation (see Climate Charter).
Pillar 2: Abolish the CRT — Regional Boaters Alliances
The Canal & River Trust was spun off from British Waterways in 2012 and converted to a charitable trust. It inherited a 200-year-old infrastructure network with a multi-billion-pound maintenance backlog and was told to fund it through donations, volunteering, and commercial property income. The result is a national body that cannot keep the toilets open, cannot maintain the pump-out stations, and cannot manage the lock gates — while paying head office salaries and running marketing campaigns about what a lovely day out the canals are.
BUILD will abolish the Canal & River Trust as a national management body and replace it with Regional Boaters Alliances — the same model as the Regional Farmer Alliances in the Farming & Agriculture Charter. Local waterways managed by the people who actually use them, funded by the licence fees of the people who live on them, accountable to the boaters who elected them.
2.1 — Structure
Each Regional Boaters Alliance covers a natural waterway region — the canals and navigable rivers within a geographic area. The Yorkshire Boaters Alliance covers Yorkshire’s waterways. The Midlands Boaters Alliance covers the Midlands canal network. The South East Boaters Alliance covers the Thames tributaries and southern canals. And so on, with boundaries determined by consultation with the boating communities themselves.
Each Alliance is governed by a council of people who actually live on or actively use the waterways in the region. Liveaboards, leisure boaters, commercial operators, and towpath users — the people who know which lock is broken, which bank is eroding, and which toilet block hasn’t been cleaned since the last royal jubilee. Elections every three years. Working boaters only on the council. No management consultants. No charity executives. No one who has never stepped onto a narrowboat.
2.2 — Local Licence Fees Stay Local
Licence fees paid by boaters in a region stay in that region. A liveaboard in Yorkshire pays into the Yorkshire Boaters Alliance. That money maintains Yorkshire’s locks, dredges Yorkshire’s channels, cleans Yorkshire’s facilities, and repairs Yorkshire’s towpaths. It does not disappear into a national pool where it funds head office costs in London while the local pump-out station remains broken.
This is the fundamental problem with the CRT model: money flows up to a national body and trickles back down, minus administration, minus marketing, minus executive salaries, minus consultancy fees. By the time it reaches the canal bank, there is not enough left to fix anything. Under the Alliance model, the money stays where it was paid and is spent where it is needed.
2.3 — Transit Licences
Boats transiting through a region without being based there — holidaymakers, visitors, boats on long-distance cruises — pay a transit licence for the canals they use. This is the same principle as a toll road: you use the infrastructure, you contribute to its maintenance. The transit fee is modest, proportionate to the distance travelled, and paid directly to the Regional Alliance whose waterways are being used.
A liveaboard who stays in one region pays a regional licence. A holidaymaker who cruises through three regions pays three transit fees. A boat that uses one canal for a weekend pays a weekend rate. The money follows the use. The Alliance that maintains the canal receives the fee from the boat that used it. Simple, fair, and local.
Pillar 3: Liveaboard Rights
3.1 — Continuous Cruiser Protections
The current system requires continuous cruisers to move every 14 days and demonstrate a ‘genuine progression’ along the waterway. In practice, the Canal & River Trust’s enforcement is inconsistent, often punitive, and applied disproportionately to those who cannot afford permanent moorings.
BUILD will replace the vague ‘genuine progression’ requirement with a clear, measurable, and reasonable movement standard that acknowledges the practical realities of canal life — including winter weather, engine breakdowns, and health issues. Enforcement will be supportive before it is punitive, and licence revocation will require a formal review process with the right of appeal.
3.2 — Mooring Costs
Permanent mooring fees will be capped at the rate of inflation for residential liveaboards. The Canal & River Trust must maintain a minimum proportion of affordable residential moorings on all managed waterways and establish a register of mooring availability.
3.3 — Services and Facilities
Liveaboards need water points, pump-out stations, rubbish disposal, electricity hookups, and postal addresses. BUILD will mandate a minimum standard of facilities per mile of navigable waterway, including water points, pump-out or Elsan disposal, rubbish and recycling collection, and the right to register a boat’s location as a postal address for voting, banking, benefits, and official correspondence. Living on a boat should not mean being invisible to the state.
Pillar 4: Boat Safety
The Boat Safety Scheme (BSS) is the equivalent of an MOT for boats. BUILD supports the principle of a safety standard but will review the BSS to ensure it is proportionate, consistent, and not used as a revenue extraction tool. Safety inspections should ensure boats are safe to live on, not that they meet the aesthetic preferences of an examiner. Costs should be reasonable and transparent.
Pillar 5: Canal Freight Revival
Before the railways, canals were the backbone of British logistics. They remain viable for slow, heavy, and non-time-critical freight — building materials, aggregates, agricultural supplies, waste, and recycling. One narrowboat carries the equivalent of approximately 25 tonnes — removing one heavy goods vehicle from the road per trip.
BUILD will commission a feasibility study into reviving canal freight on key routes, with particular focus on routes connecting quarries, farms, and distribution hubs to urban areas. Pilot schemes will be funded for aggregate transport (complementing the waterway dredging programme), agricultural distribution, and waste collection. If the economics work, canal freight will be expanded as a national logistics option.
Pillar 6: Waterway Access for All
Canals and rivers are public amenities. Towpaths should be accessible, well-maintained, and safe. BUILD will invest in towpath surfacing and accessibility improvements on all major canal routes, with priority given to routes connecting communities to services. Towpath cycling and walking will be encouraged as zero-emission commuting routes, with lighting and signage where appropriate.
Access to the water itself — for swimming, kayaking, paddleboarding, and other recreational use — will be protected and expanded. Where water quality permits (and under BUILD’s sewage ban, it will), public access points will be maintained and advertised. The waterways belong to everyone.
The canals built the Industrial Revolution. BUILD will rebuild them for the next one.
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BUILD UK
builduk.club
August 2026
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