Holiday Hire – Update re next season

After much deliberation we have decided to remove the holiday hire boats from our hire fleet for the 2025 & 2026 season.

This means that Pennine Cruisers will not be offering short break or weekly holiday hire boat after November 2024, we will review this in 2026 and may well re introduce holiday hire boats into our fleet for 2027 onwards.

This decision is not something that has been made lightly, but to give our customers some back story and information as to why please read below:

The Leeds Liverpool canal is not being maintained to a high enough standard to keep it open and navigable. Canal and River trust have recently completed some major works to one of the seven reservoirs that feeds the Leeds Liverpool. This was Barrowford reservoir, the repairs undertaken meant that when finished the new full level of this reservoir is thousands of mega litres less in water than previously as this was the only cost-effective repair, these repairs over ran by months and months. By close water management and two seriously wet seasons the canal system managed to stay open with just enough water whilst these repairs were undertaken.

Canal and River trust now have planned works for the 2025 / 2026 season for another two of the seven reservoir’s that feed the Leeds Liverpool canal, so we will have even less water available to us to keep the canal open whilst these reservoirs are worked on.

Canal and River trust have no choice but to do these works as they have informed us this is due to a government change in required standards, requiring upgrades to be done.

We fear that even if we have a wet season next year with the loss of two of the seven reservoirs and the new lower capacity of Barrowford that it is highly probable we will see significant lock closures. If we have dry weather then these closures are likely to start early and last for a large part of our trading season. On top of the water resources issues we face the general maintenance of the canal network is lacking, hardly any preventative work takes place from CRT, it’s all reactive and therefore ends up in closures that last longer than necessary and cost the trust way more than they ever should do. These matters only seem to be getting worse, with more and more issues arises and CRT having less and less funds to fix them. The stress this causes us with the uncertainty of not knowing what to tell our customers is unbelievably difficult.

Pennine Cruisers has been trading for nearly 60 years, and has always offered holiday hire. It is a real shame for us to now remove this from our business, but we have to plan and be realistic in order to future proof and protect our business. Thankfully our daily boat hire and trip boats are unaffected by canal closures due to water resources as it’s the locks that get closed and these boats don’t use the locks. We are very grateful that we operate in such a lovely picturesque 17-mile lock free pound and therefore we can diversify and expand these aspects of our business whilst the canal network is hopefully invested in by Canal and River Trust.

At our monthly trade meetings Canal and River Trust keep telling us all that the canal will be better at the end of all these repairs, and we are hopeful it will be, however many businesses won’t be around at the end of this process unless the manage to successfully diversify. Canal and River Trust offer no compensation to any boaters, businesses or private when the canal is closed. As a business if we can’t fulfil your holiday we give you a full refund, we often get very little notice of a closure, so with very little notice we have to cancel and refund all our holiday bookings. We do not even get a reduction in our licence fee’s for when the canal is closed, never mind any form of compensation.

So our diversification plan is to: Remove the holiday hire boats from our fleet for the 2025 and 2026 season. Add 2 more day boats to our fleet for the 2025 season, so we will run 8 day boats. We also plan to add a 3rd trip boat into our fleet at some point during the 2025 season. The new additions will all be new builds and will be introduced in phases throughout the 2025 as and when they are ready.

I hope you are understanding of our situation, and hope that you will consider holidaying with us again at some point in the future as and when the time is right for us to expand back into the holiday sector.

Yours Zoe, Ian & Pam (owners), and the whole team here at Pennine.

PLEASE NOTE THAT WE DO STILL HAVE SOME AVAILABILITY FOR 2024 SO GET IN TOUCH IF YOU WANT TO GRAB A QUICKLY HOLIDAY WITH US ON THE L&L BEFORE THE END OF THE SEASON.