LOTTERY AWARD PUTS HALTON'S WATERWAYS ON THE MAP IN TIME FOR NATIONAL FESTIVAL - 27th July 2005

A grant from the National Lottery's Awards for All scheme has helped three canal groups in the North West spearhead a joint campaign to highlight the diversity of the myriad of waterways that pass through the borough of Halton in north Cheshire, and to encourage their conservation, restoration and sympathetic development.

The award of £5,000, together with financial support worth around £1,000 from Halton Borough Council has helped the societies – Sankey Canal Restoration Society (SCARS), Runcorn Locks Restoration Society and River Weaver Navigation Society - produce a colourful brochure, and mount an eye-catching static display and video presentation, that will all be showcased at the Inland Waterways Association's National Festival, to be held at Preston Brook in Cheshire over the August bank holiday.

Andy Screen, co-ordinator of the Halton Waterways project for the three societies and deputy chairman of the IWA's Restoration Committee said:

"It is not always easy to get three organisations with their own clearly defined agendas to work together for a common purpose but since the idea was first proposed in November 2004, there has been fantastic support from all quarters, underpinned by the resolute backing of Halton Borough Council and its staff.

"It was a nerve-wracking wait for the Lottery decision to come through, and we wondered for a while whether it would all come together in time for Preston Brook, but after a successful pre-launch outing at the Halton Show in mid-July, it's now all systems go. The National Festival is a superb chance for local societies to bring their projects to the attention of the thousands who attend from all over the country, and when we knew the 2005 Festival was going to be on our doorstep, it was just too good an opportunity to pass up."

He added: "It is amazing how many waterways we have in Halton, from the mighty River Mersey to long-abandoned, and hard-to-find man-made navigations such as the Runcorn & Weston Canal. Many of these ran literally cheek-by-jowl with each other, yet were virtually all under separate management and ownership; often in competition with each other but ultimately each a vital link in a much larger regional network that brought such massive prosperity to the region.

"In the same way that the three societies have come together for this project, we want to show that Halton's disparate waterways can be sympathetically redeveloped together as a linked network that could have massive potential for tourism and leisure pursuits in the immediate areas of Runcorn and Widnes, and far beyond."

The Halton Waterways project will have its own marquee on site for the duration of the National Festival, and individual societies from within the project are also making presentations in the Theatre Tent on Saturday 27th August.

A brochure to accompany this press release is available in two parts as PDF files, which you can access here: Part 1 (344Kb) and Part 2 (584 Kb). You will need Adobe Acrobat viewer to open these files; this is available free from the Adobe web site.