A FARMING couple have accused the Canal and River Trust of letting thousands of gallons of water leak onto their land while closing the canal because of a lack of water.

Tim and Sheila Pilling, of Wilkinson's Farm, East Marton, first noticed a leak from an underground pipe taking water from Winterburn Reservoir to Greenberfield Locks, Barnoldswick, more than a year ago when a tractor slid out of control down a sodden slope.

Since then and despite several complaints to the trust, thousands of gallons of water have leaked out on to a field from two separate leaks, rendering about six acres of the land useless either to be used for horseriders, as part of the farm's livery business, or to be made into hay, which they need for winter fodder.

Another part of the Pillings' land, which is bordered by the canal itself has also been rendered useless because of leaks from the canal wall, and they say saplings have died because their roots have become waterlogged.

The land cannot be used for grazing sheep, because there is a risk the animals could get stuck in the mud, and it cannot be harvested, because it is both sodden, and cannot be accessed by heavy machinery.

The couple had also planned to host a horse orienteering 'TREC' event on their land this year, as they have in the past, but have been forced to relocate it to another site, because the land is too dangerous to use.

"It is not just the drought that has caused this, it is because the canal is poorly maintained. We appreciate it is 200 years old, but maintenance has deteriorated so much over the years. There used to be a team who used to regularly maintain different stretches of the canal, but that doesn't happen anymore," said Mrs Pilling.

"I notified the Canal and River Trust in March last year, of the leakage and even though we have contacted them on many occasions they have made no attempt to fix the problem."

Meanwhile, at the end of last month, the trust closed all the locks between Gargrave and Wigan, blaming a lack of rainfall leading to depleted water stocks in the canal.

A Canal and River Trust spokesperson said the charity had been talking to Mr and Mrs Pilling to do with leakage from the canal, had carried out work in the past, and referred to the current leak from the Winterburn pipe as 'small'.

“We’ve been liaising with Mr and Mrs Pilling at Wilkinson’s Farm regarding issues with leakage from the canal. In the past, we’ve carried out sheet piling works to address the problem and have just completed extensive grouting works to further reduce leakage along this stretch of canal. As the canal is more than 200 years old, and largely features a clay-lined canal bed, it does suffer from a degree of seepage but we’re hoping that recent works should greatly reduce the problem.

"The trust is continuing investigations into the small leak from the pipe from Winterburn Reservoir. As this is a small leak, we’ve been unable to locate exactly where it’s coming from. However, we’ve recently instructed a contractor to come and look into it to try and locate if the leak is coming from the pipe or from other localised drainage. Given the severity of the dry weather, with rainfall considerably lower than average over a number of months, we don’t feel that the amount of water lost through leakage would have had a significant effect on our ability to keep the locks open for boats to use. We do however understand how frustrating this is for the Pillings’ and we’re doing everything we can to get the problem solved. “