Last Sunday (1st September) the Islington Labour Councillors for St Peter’s ward staffed a stall at the Angel Canal Festival to talk to local people about some of the important issues in the area. This annual event is always a wonderful family occasion and celebration of Regent’s Canal and London’s industrial heritage. The festival is based around the City Road Lock, Basin and towpath alongside the Regents Canal.

Our petition this year was to make the canal and towpath safer.

The petition calls for the Canal and River Trust (CaRT) to introduce cycle calming measures on the towpath that force speeding cyclists to slow down, to enforce their license conditions against the small minority of boaters that cause a nuisance, either with noisy smelly generators, or by holding noisy late-night parties and events that disturb residents and other boaters, and to keep the bins emptied. The response to the petition was very positive, and over 100 local people signed.

City Road Basin is one of the largest open spaces in Islington and Regent’s Canal is an important leisure space. Our whole community should be able to share and enjoy it.

We had a visit from the chief executive of the CaRT, and we had an interesting and useful discussion with him about ways in which we can work together between the Council, the Police and the Trust to try and resolve some of the towpath issues, but we also stressed to them that residents want to see a real difference in the levels of nuisance and disturbance that they experience from the minority of disruptive boaters, and other disruptive persons that are currently being attracted to the canal.

You can find out more about our campaign here http://cllrmartinklute.blogspot.co.uk/

Councillors Alice Perry, Martin Klute and Gary Doolan