Residents forced to pay Canal Fee

Enraged residents of Shelley Road, Preston, have rejected expensive garden licence agreements.
British Waterways North West is charging those who live on that Lancaster Canal embankment over £100 a year as standard rent for occupying the land between the residents’ property and the canal.

Miss Caroline Hamer, of 67 Shelley Road, Ashton-on-Ribble, said: “This is absolutely appalling. There’s not a single person happy with North West Waterways’ decision.”

In their letters to Shelley Road, British Waterways North West wrote: “As required by our Government, we are required to ensure that anyone who is using our land pays an open market rent for it.”

Of the people living on Shelley Road, around half of them own the deeds to their homes. They are the ones who will not have to pay anything extra.

However, Miss Hamer argues there are those who rent who have been using the land between the canal and their homes for several years, and it wasn’t an issue beforehand.

The 19 year old sales assistant said: “It’s only because the canal was sold. We have to pay over a hundred pounds plus VAT, and a payment of £75.00 plus VAT to the solicitors handling this problem, MB Hodgson & Son.

It might not seem like a lot of money to some people but it is to others. We have pensioners who live here as well.

Everything has become expensive these days, and little by little it does add up.”

And it is not just Shelley Road residents who are against this annual rent fee.

Mr John Williams, of Blackpool Road, Preston, said: “I have family living on that canal; they’ve lived there their whole lives and never had to pay a canal renting fee. They say it’s to benefit the canal, but its just greed.”

The 74 year old pensioner said meetings have been set up with their local MP Mark Hendrick.

“They’ve been advised to seek professional advice or speak to the Citizen’s Advice Bureau. It’s not fair at all. Why should anyone pay to live at that canal terminal when it looks like a tip.”

Locals have complained that the beginning of the canal there has been used a waste land. Numerous complaints have been made to the council to clean up the grotty area but it seems they have fallen on deaf ears.

North West Waterways business development manager, Alan Carter is aware of the concern this action has caused, and has met with Mr Hendrick.

They have agreed that the annual rent paid by those with agreements already is to be reviewed to current market levels, as required by the government.

Mr Carter has acknowledged in his letters that the increase in annual payment could cause some short term financial difficulty.

“Accordingly we are willing to consider a phasing in of any increase as circumstances require and will seek (your) agreement to any increase before invoicing (you) for the same.”

However, some locals feel that this problem could have been avoidable if the central government had not cut its grants to British Waterways.

Join the debate:

Do you think Shelley Road residents should pay the canal fee?

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Futuristic waterway could soon be a reality

The resurrection of the long forgotten Lancaster Canal route waterway system may be behind the Shelly Road fees.

A visionary £800 million re-development project of the city’s famous old waterways could see river taxis’ and boats floating above pedestrians in Preston city centre as early as 2012.

The project has the backing of the Canal Trust, Preston council and British Waterways, who maintain the country’s canal systems. The Preston City Link Canal Trust was founded in 2003 with the intention of restoring the Lancaster Canal. However, actually construction won’t begin until around 2009.

Currently, the terminus is in Shelley Road, in Ashton. The plans would restore the canal section to a new marina within the Maudland area, next to the Maudland building of the University of Central Lancashire.

In an interview with the Lancashire Evening Post, Lancaster Canal Trust chairman Colin Barnes, of Victoria Road, Fulwood, said: “The journey starts at Ashton Basin and follows the old route right into the city as far as Maudland Bank.”

The original aqueduct was knocked down in 1964, so a new one would have to be built over Aqueduct Street. From the duct boats would wind their way under Fylde Road to Miley Green and onto the land between Maudland Road and Cold Bath Street were hopefully the new marina will be housed.

The multimillion pound project also aims to regenerate the derelict Preston to Longridge Rail Line which architects envision to pass over the new marina via a bridge. The rail line would travel as far as Garmull Lane where it will connect with Park and Ride facilities. There are plenty of utilities within Preston to exploit in order to make this project a huge success, such as the Ribble Link and the Preston Docks.

The Lancaster Canal was originally put forward as way to link Lancaster with Wigan. The 75 mile long waterway system has a tunnel at Hincaster, Cumbria, as well as two river crossings at Lune and Ribble.

Construction first began in 1792 and by 1819 all but the duct across the Ribble has been completed. Unfortunately money ran out and a tramway was introduced as a replacement instead. That later closed in 1857.

The canal has never had to opportunity to live up to its potential, until now.

Chairman Colin Barnes found the original plans and drawings by the original canal architect John Rennie, who also built Waterloo Bridge and London Bridge, in an old sea chest, and wanted to make his vision a full reality.

He said one of the main aims of this project is to make sure people benefit from the expansion. Preston City Council believes that a water based transportation network could also help ease the high levels of congestion, especially within the city centre.

After all, having such unique concepts such as floating boats or water taxis and buses will defiantly push Preston to the forefront within the Lancashire region, as well as help put the city on the map as an upcoming area in England as a whole. That in itself would be a great boost for the local economy just from a tourism and attraction standpoint.

Just as Manchester is known for its trams, soon Preston will be renowned for its waterways.


* The historic canal drawings by John Rennie are on display for the first time in 300 years at the Lancaster’s Martime Museum.


Have your say.

HOW DOES THE WEB DEFINE THE DIGITAL NEWSROOM?

“Defining digital: Does the type and style of coverage of news on the web help us define the digital newsroom?"

This is the question put to my digital newsroom class. Its actually quite an interesting topic as a first assignment, especially since the class consists of nothing but "digital natives." By this im referring to the fact that we all belong to a technology adept generation, (one very much used to accessing the web from computers, laptops, phones i.e. Nokia N95 etc) and we all actively question, probe and seek out different angles in news online.

Due to the progress of technonlogy over the past decade, the way we view and access news has changed. We are no longer constrained by the print medium and its limitations in breaking news, the internet's immediacy curred that - how many people found out about 9/11 or Prince Harry's covert assignemnt in Afgahinstan via the internet?

The important thing to remember here is not just were the news is accessed but how it Is accessed. Despite there being numerous fantastic news sites such as the http://news.bbc.co.uk/ and http://www.guardian.co.uk/, software advancement has opened a new portal of news consumption. At the annual meeting of the ASNE (American Society of Newspaper Editors), media mogul Rupert Murdoch (News Corporation) said:

"we need to realise that the next generation of people accessing news and information...have a different set of expectations about the kind of news they will get," this includes in turn "when and how they get it, where they get it from, and who they will get it from."

Murdoch is right in saying this. A revolution is taking place in an industry where the most sought after readership target audience (late teens till mid twenties) are technology savvy people who are increasingly turning to the web as their number one choice for news. Internet portals like Yahoo!, MSN and Google are among the top favourite destinations for news.

And it does not end there. Podcasts and blogs have become a favourite haunt too, and not just with the younger generations either. Many political journalists now have their own blogs on their respective newspaper sites. These blogs are an excellent example of how the gap between the inital idea of the read/write web is being bridged.

Blogs are an advancement in the interaction section between journalists and the wider public. As news seekers we now have more freedom and control over what we wish to read, hear or see. We do not need to rely on some god like figure who tells us what to consume and how or what order it should be in. Not only can we easily choose what information we want, we can also choose various multimedia in which to consume it in-whether it be text, audio (podcasts), slideshows with audio, video or simpley pictures with captions. In other words multimedia has allowed users to control the flow of information, not be controlled by it. The impact of blogs are a good example of this. People need news which is continously updated and a point of view that doesn't just explain what has happened but why its happened. Blogs also speak on a more personal level, frankly they are more opinionated- thank you freedom of speech!

In his book "Online News", Stuart Allan argues that by acting as "unofficial news sources on the web, blogs are linking together information and opinion which supplement the original coverage provided by "offical" news outlets. The genius of blogs is that their publishers pull together their resources from a diverse array of other sites which "resituate a given news event within a larger context so as to illuminate multiple angles."

In February 2002 Jeremy Wagstaff, of the Wall Street Journal, wrote how he could forsee a future where “the editor that determines the content of our daily read may not be a salaried webmaster or a war-weathered newspaper editor, but a bleary-eyed blogger in his under shirt willing to put in the surfing time on our behalf.”

Journalist Scott Rosenberg observed that weblogs "would barley be able to get by without the information fodder provided by the mainstream media. Meanwhile, time strapped reporters and editors in downsized, resource-hungry newsrooms are increasingly turing to blogs for story tips and pointers. No one has enough time to read everything on the web; blogs offer a smart reader the chance to piggyback on someone else’s reading time." (2002)

While reading "Grassroot Journalism" I came across a good point worthy of mention. The author wrote "bloggers and operators of independent news sites already do a respectable job of scanning for and sorting news for people who want it" (they are virtual editors.) "The editorial function has been adopted not just by bloggers, but by a host of new kinds of online news operations."

Due to the demand for "new news" we cannot afford to just stick to traditional journalistic methods in gathering data and assembling it. The web offers a solution for this - there are various sources from which to gather information and quickly! Blogs are an example for this and how we can showcase journalism's transformation from a twentieth century mass media structure to somehting more profound and democratic - a sort of cyber-liberty. With software companies providing us with the communications toolkit that allow anyone to become a journalist at no cost, this current revolution is just one chapter in the never ending evolutionary technological story. One which has made global reach possible.