June 2017 - Peter Underwood reports on the Canal & River Trust's latest attempts to reduce the number of collisions and injuries involving cyclists on our towpaths – ranging from cut-out ‘sleeping policeman’ to spray on signs urging people to slow down to two new videos.

The Canal & River Trust claims its towpaths are “fast becoming one of the nation’s favourite places to relax” but speeding cyclists, especially in urban areas are turning them into a nightmare for families, pet owners and tourists.

June 2017 - Boaters notice that shortening visitor mooring times seems to be a knee-jerk response from Canal & River Trust and, to a lesser extent, British Waterways before them. As Peter Underwood explains, it is not particularly logical, but can boaters do anything to change it?

Certain parts of the system – ironically not the busiest – have a plethora of short duration visitor moorings. It seems to be C&RT's only answer when holiday boaters complain; even though it doesn't help.

June 2017 - Canal & River Trust has denied that it holds any information relating to a working group it claims to have set up to look at the results of the 2016 Boat Owners’ Survey, Allan Richards reports

Despite repeating several times that it holds no information about the group it has still gone on to offer to talk about the possible impact the same (non-existent?) working group might have on C&RT policies in a move that leaves us gasping at the Orwellian doublethink on show.

June 2017 - It seems C&RT is simply not repairing the network as fast as it is falling apart – something many boaters suspect from their personal experience – Allan Richards has been crunching the numbers.

Some months back, The Floater described how C&RT had failed to meet its most important maintenance target for the 2015/16 financial year. At the beginning of the year (April 1 2015), the Trust had some 59,133 recorded defects on its 2,000 miles of waterways (up from 50,579 the previous year).