A CRUMBLING lock wall collapsed into the River Weaver last Thursday, causing chaos to river users who cannot now travel between Vale Royal Locks and Winsford Flashes.

British Waterways, which maintains Britain's 2,000mile network of canals and rivers, say they do not know what caused the collapse but their engineers are at the scene investigating.

Fell

A section of pier masonry fell into the River Weaver downstream from the two locks between Northwich and Winsford.

Stewart Gardiner, chairman of the River Weaver Navigation Society, said: "It's quite a dramatic failure when sandstone and granite blocks collapse into the water course."

British Waterways insists stoppages like this are common in old canal and river structures and its main priority is to get the river re-opened to users.

A spokesman could not give a specific timetable for fixing the crumbled wall but said: "We have brought forward the £50,000 repair of the large lock to make sure boats will be able to use the river again in a few weeks."

Maintenance checks are carried out on a regular basis although British Waterways could not confirm when an engineer had last checked that section of the river or why a potential problem was not spotted.

But British Waterways is adamant that an increase in river traffic does not make walls more likely to collapse.

Dr Bill Craig at Manchester University agreed that more boats using the canal since the Anderton Boatlift opened would not have had a detrimental effect on the structure.

He said: "The canals are old and they do deteriorate with time I don't really see that the movement of more boats up and down the canal would have made a big difference."

ecummins@guardiangrp.co.uk