‘Llangollen Canal collapse will massively affect business’

The owner of a narrowboat hire company near the site of a collapsed canal embankment has said it will have a “massively negative effect” on business.

The giant hole on the Llangollen Canal in Whitchurch opened up on Monday, dragging in two boats and leaving one balancing over it. Dozens of liveaboards – people who live on the canal – are stranded, with repairs expected to take months.

Paul Donnelly is operator of Floating Holidays, based in nearby Middlewich, Cheshire, and said the area is a landmark destination.

“A lot of our customers do the Llangollen Canal to do the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct,” he said.

“We have customers coming from all over the world who come specifically to go on the canals and hire our boats, so it’s going to have a large effect on our business and our future bookings.

“There’s two of the other major routes that people come to do with the Anderton Boat Lift being out of action and the Bridgewater Canal having had a breach… earlier this year in January, so it is limiting a lot of options for customers to do different routes.”

He said it was hard to estimate how much money the firm could lose, and he worried people would be put off booking because of the event, despite the company still being able to operate on other routes avoiding the incident site.

Water has been lost from about 1.6km (0.6 miles) of the canal between Whitchurch and Grindley Brook, according to the CRT, which said its immediate task was to ensure boaters were supported and the area made safe.

West Midlands regional operations manager Richard Preston told BBC Radio Shropshire on Tuesday: “Assessments to the bank could take days if not weeks and [for the] reconstruction. We’re definitely talking several months before we can get the canal back open.”

A dam is also being built to withhold the water at the site.

“These things tend to take an awful long time to fix, especially with the very difficult location to get to,” said Mr Donnelly.

“They’re going to have to build essentially a road up to the canal, where there is not one at the moment.”

“In terms of our business… I recognise it’s a nice-to-have… there are people who are in a worse situation than we are,” he said.

“If any of those people are struggling and need accommodation, we have got hire boats that are laid up for the winter.”

He said everyone helped each other in the canal community.

“We’ve had similar challenges in different years with breaches or locks failing, and then the drought this year, and we’ve all tended to pull together in the season to help each other out.”

The incident has left many without homes, including Paul Stowe, who is originally from Solihull.

He, his wife, son, and two cats have been left without a home and have been helped by a local boating company.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever moor in this area again, I’m not sure I’ll ever moor on an embankment again,” he said.

“I’ll be honest with you, it’s very debatable [that] I’ll ever want to go on a boat again.”

Read more: ‘I may not get on boat again after canal collapse’