Practical Toolkit

IWA’s Waterway Recovery Group organises and runs around 25 week long residential canal camps as well as weekend digs via our regional groups.  Every year our volunteers spend over 40,000 hours restoring the canals of England and Wales.  You can invite WRG to become part of your restoration project to help a wide range of activities from vegetation clearance to a full lock chamber restoration. 

• Find out what’s involved in hosting a Canal Camp
• If you’d like to apply to host a Canal Camp please contact the WRG Canal Camps team via Head Office.

Health & Safety law requires that sites are managed responsibly, and that those operating plant and vehicles have appropriate skills and training.  WRG’s Driver Authorisation Scheme is the tool that is used to satisfy this requirement on all WRG sites.

WRG also has a specialist forestry team who can undertake a wide range of activities from cross-cutting and maintenance to aerial work and working from Mobile Elevated Work Platforms.

There are some useful WRG documents here.

The Restoration Training Award has been set up to assist with the cost of training volunteers in skills associated with inland waterway restoration. Since the early years, restoration projects have gradually become more and more complex, requiring volunteers to operate large machinery, conduct extensive surveys and deal with increasingly demanding legislation, all to the very highest standards.

WRG’s Training Award aims to promote a more confident and skilled volunteer workforce. The criteria for the award are set deliberately wide and encourage applications from individuals as well as canal societies who may wish to organise training for a group of volunteers.

This award can provide up to 75% of the direct costs (i.e. course costs, travel and accommodation expense) up to a maximum of £750.

• Training Grant – Fact Sheet & Application Form 

If you have any queries, please contact the WRG board via Head Office.