It is 200 years since then Bedford mayor Charles Short, lobbied by eight local businessmen, put forward a plan for a 26km waterway to link the River Great Ouse and the Grand Union Canal. Roads were poor in those days and the idea was to find another transport route aimed at helping areas along the way to prosper. Chris Gill finds out more.
Charles Short might be turning in his grave knowing his vision is still a bit of a blur – and even more so that the project is now being held up by great crested newts.
The on-off scheme has had a chequered history but it received a significant kiss of life in1994.
Brian Young – a Bedford resident and Inland Waterway Association member – had the idea of marking the new Millennium by promoting A Waterway for All.
He saw a reinvention of canals for modern day use to serve new industries of leisure, tourism, and communications.
He founded the Bedford & Milton Keynes Waterway Trust as an informal group and it was short-listed for funding by the Millennium Commission but the plan foundered because any grant could not be matched.
However, 2000 was marked by British Waterways joining the Trust to investigate its feasibility and now there is renewed optimism for its future.
The recent Bedford Waterspace and Economic Impact and Opportunities studies described the scheme as a “strategically significant project.” In it the Borough council agreed to support an 11 point plan as a strategic infrastructure link benefitting everyone but particularly important to the delivery of sustainable growth in the northern Marston Vale.
Graham Mabbutt, chairman of the B&MK Waterway Trust, said: “This study provides an action framework which anticipates the creation of the B&MK missing link of waterway from the Grand Union Canal at MK to the Great Ouse at Kempston. It also complements strategic plans to open up a wider Fenland waterways link.
“We have always believed that improvements and restoration of the Great Ouse through Bedford would be the catalyst for developing the river westwards linking with the proposed waterway.” Neil Hayes, the external communications director of the B&MK Waterway Trust, said: “An economic assessment of the project carried out in 2009 highlighted the huge benefits to the locality and wider region.
“Over a 10-year period, visitors to the waterway and linked facilities – restaurants, campsites, cycle-hire and a host of other enterprises – could pump between £167 million and £265m into the local economy.
“Then the ‘place-shaping’ of new businesses and additional economic activity, together with the uplift in property values along the waterway route could generate as much as £97m to £373m.
“This has been given extra muscle with the Bedford Waterspace Study.
The economic, environmental and social benefits of developing the B&MK Waterway are the constant threads running through the study.
“The accompanying economic impact study of the Great Ouse is estimated at £250k per mile per annum. Bedford as an urban area should be able to considerably exceed this figure with a potential benefit from this stretch of river of £4.5million, according to the study.
At a dinner last week to mark the 200th anniversary of the original idea, Bedford mayor Dave Hodgson, said: “I don’t want there to be any more mayors before we have completion of the project.
“I have never been more convinced that we are getting closer.
We have something on the ground with the underpass beneath the A421 – which is obviously something Mayor Short wasn’t able to do.” The waterway link could be in operation inside 15 years however for the moment there has been a slight hitch.
Great crested newts, which are protected species, are holding up the digging out of linear ponds in Marston Vale Innovation Park.
No one says the project has been plain sailing, but the dream of Charles Short and co is closer than ever to being realised.
