Independent. Built from Canal & River Trust's own published notices, with no affiliation to or endorsement by the Trust.
The archive / The network
The network
On 22 September 2026, 38 navigation closures were in force. 34 of them — 90% — had no published reopening date.
That share is measured against the closures shut today, not against the whole archive. A closure that reopened last year says nothing about whether a current one has an end date.
How much warning closures give
Recovered from the notice identifiers, which carry their creation time. CRT does not publish announcement times, so this is the only available measure of how much notice boaters get.
| Cause | Closures | Median warning | No warning at all |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weather | 418 | 0 days | 89.7% |
| Wear and tear | 298 | 0 days | 61.7% |
| Cause not stated | 155 | 0 days | 89.7% |
| CRT winter programme | 137 | 188 days | 0.0% |
| Nothing failed | 87 | 4 days | 43.7% |
| Other cause | 81 | 0 days | 84.0% |
| Struck by boat or vehicle | 45 | 0 days | 95.6% |
| Vandalism | 21 | 0 days | 100.0% |
| Ground moved | 6 | 0 days | 83.3% |
| Someone else's works | 4 | 0 days | 100.0% |
Nobody can forewarn a flood, and the weather row reads as it should. The winter programme is announced months ahead and never arrives unannounced. Wear and tear is the row worth asking about: an asset reaching the end of its life is not a sudden event, though it can degrade quietly for years and fail in an afternoon.
161 notices carried over in CRT's May 2025 system migration are excluded: their identifiers were re-stamped on migration day.
Closure rate by canal
Closure-days per kilometre, so a long trunk route is not compared with a short arm. Restricted to waterways of at least 10km; below that a rate says more about the denominator than the canal. The range is a 95% Poisson interval, so a rate from a handful of closures does not look as certain as one from hundreds.
All closures
Every full navigation closure, planned and unplanned, counting every day it was shut.
| Canal | km | Closure-days | Days per km | 95% range | Closures per km |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bridgwater & Taunton Canal | 24 | 1,368 | 57.7 | 54.7–60.8 | 0.17 |
| Tame Valley Canal | 14 | 531 | 37.6 | 34.4–40.8 | 0.35 |
| Walsall Canal | 13 | 493 | 37.4 | 34.1–40.7 | 0.68 |
| Huddersfield Narrow Canal | 32 | 1,088 | 33.9 | 31.9–35.9 | 1.40 |
| Weaver Navigation | 34 | 914 | 26.9 | 25.2–28.7 | 0.29 |
| Rochdale Canal | 52 | 1,039 | 20.0 | 18.8–21.2 | 1.08 |
| Peak Forest Canal | 23 | 421 | 18.0 | 16.2–19.7 | 0.98 |
| Ashton Canal | 11 | 171 | 15.6 | 13.3–17.9 | 1.28 |
| Birmingham & Fazeley Canal | 24 | 294 | 12.2 | 10.8–13.6 | 0.66 |
| Caldon Canal | 27 | 329 | 12.1 | 10.8–13.4 | 0.51 |
| South Stratford Canal | 21 | 226 | 10.9 | 9.5–12.3 | 0.63 |
| Macclesfield Canal | 44 | 478 | 10.8 | 9.8–11.8 | 0.65 |
Unplanned, cruising season
Closures outside CRT's winter programme, counting only the days that fell between 15 March and 31 October. This is the disruption a boater actually meets.
| Canal | km | Closure-days | Days per km | 95% range | Closures per km |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bridgwater & Taunton Canal | 24 | 830 | 35.0 | 32.6–37.4 | 0.17 |
| Walsall Canal | 13 | 353 | 26.8 | 24.0–29.6 | 0.68 |
| Huddersfield Narrow Canal | 32 | 708 | 22.1 | 20.4–23.7 | 1.28 |
| Tame Valley Canal | 14 | 269 | 19.1 | 16.8–21.3 | 0.28 |
| Weaver Navigation | 34 | 560 | 16.5 | 15.1–17.9 | 0.26 |
| Ashton Canal | 11 | 155 | 14.1 | 11.9–16.4 | 1.28 |
| Rochdale Canal | 52 | 677 | 13.0 | 12.0–14.0 | 0.90 |
| Caldon Canal | 27 | 349 | 12.8 | 11.5–14.2 | 0.51 |
| Birmingham & Fazeley Canal | 24 | 248 | 10.3 | 9.0–11.6 | 0.58 |
| Old Main Line | 22 | 206 | 9.4 | 8.1–10.7 | 0.41 |
| Erewash Canal | 18 | 167 | 9.1 | 7.7–10.4 | 1.52 |
| Lee Navigation | 42 | 357 | 8.4 | 7.5–9.3 | 0.99 |
Crt winter programme
Works CRT flags as its scheduled winter programme, counting every day. Planned maintenance, not breakdown.
| Canal | km | Closure-days | Days per km | 95% range | Closures per km |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tame Valley Canal | 14 | 130 | 9.2 | 7.6–10.8 | 0.07 |
| Rufford Branch (L&L Canal) | 11 | 79 | 6.9 | 5.4–8.4 | 0.35 |
| Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal | 56 | 339 | 6.0 | 5.4–6.7 | 0.11 |
| Peak Forest Canal | 23 | 136 | 5.8 | 4.8–6.8 | 0.13 |
| Rochdale Canal | 52 | 297 | 5.7 | 5.1–6.4 | 0.17 |
| Huddersfield Narrow Canal | 32 | 156 | 4.9 | 4.1–5.6 | 0.12 |
| Calder & Hebble Navigation | 35 | 134 | 3.8 | 3.2–4.4 | 0.06 |
| Staffordshire & Worcestershire Cnl | 75 | 242 | 3.2 | 2.8–3.6 | 0.07 |
| Leicester Line (Grand Union Canal) | 66 | 200 | 3.0 | 2.6–3.4 | 0.05 |
| North Stratford Canal | 20 | 46 | 2.3 | 1.6–3.0 | 0.05 |
| Pocklington Canal | 15 | 32 | 2.1 | 1.4–2.8 | 0.07 |
| Grand Union Canal | 210 | 391 | 1.9 | 1.7–2.0 | 0.07 |
Lengths and lock counts come from CRT's ArcGIS open data, published under the strictest reading of its licence: non-commercial use, attribution to Canal & River Trust, and no warranty. A notice is attributed to the whole named waterway, so a rate is not a share of the navigation open.
Is it getting worse?
Not answerable yet, and the archive will not pretend otherwise. CRT's notice system went live in May 2025. Only 3 completed months allow a like-for-like year-on-year comparison. 3 months is a short series, and the 2025 baseline may be under-recorded while the system bedded in. A full season against a full season becomes possible after 31 October 2027.
What is shut right now · Explore the archive · Download the data · Method and limits