The Floater January 2018

January 2018 - Following on the loss of the iconic Lightship, Planet, from Liverpool's Canning dock after Canal & River Trust towed it to Sharpness and sold it for a fraction of its value it seems more, much-photographed, vessels are about to depart Salthouse Dock, as Peter Underwood reports.

January 2018 - Canal & River Trust is about to raise £150m in 2018 by issuing bonds. This follows a disappointing financial year where the value of its assets has fallen due to a rise in pension fund deficit. Allan Richards provides the details.

January 2018 - Canal & River Trust has been less than open about it's bid to Defra to take over the Environment Agency navigations and even the news today that it had failed only crept out by way of a Facebook post from boaters. Peter Underwood reports.

January 2018 - Canal & River Trust is looking for yet more volunteers – this time it's lock keepers for the Grand Union, Regents and River Lee in London, as Alec Wood reports.

January 2018 - Here at The Floater we like to keep boaters in touch with the output of Canal & River Trust's spin doctors.

January 2018 - At the start of the year The Floater's predicted: “Few Waterway Partnership members or chairs will survive the reduction in the number of Waterway Regions from 10 to 6.

January 2018 - A tiny laminated notice posted near a key heritage building in one of the less frequented parts of the Birmingham Canal Navigations, just as the Christmas break began could easily have passed without notice and boaters and canal enthusiasts would subsequently have been left wonderi

January 2018 - As the planning consultation on bulldozing the Flapper music pub on Birmingham's Cambrian Wharf and replacing it with high rise flats was closing the Canal & River Trust put in a powerful, formal objection to the city council, saying it should not go ahead, Peter Underwood repo

January 2018 - Senior Canal & River Trust managers are now briefing groups across the business, telling them that Waterways Partnerships will be reconstituted following the transition from ten Waterway Regions to six Waterway Super-Regions and suggesting that the 'new' partnerships will have

January 2018 - What will 2018 bring for boaters on the UK's waterways? We have been taking a look at the trends developing in Milton Keynes Towers and elsewhere and here is what we think you need to be looking out for this year.