Part of the Leeds-Liverpool Canal has been closed after a wall collapsed following heavy rain.

Much of the water has been drained from the section of the canal between Three Rise Locks and Dowley Gap in Bingley to allow urgent repair work to be carried out.

Boats will be unable to use that stretch of the canal for most of the rest of this week while workmen rebuild a ten-metre length of canal wall which was supporting the bank.

Brian Horne, section foreman for British Waterways, said the collapsed wall had now been removed from the canal bottom and he hoped rebuilding work would be completed by Friday.

"The problem was a length of canal wall which holds the bank. There's an access road to the lock house and another property at the top of it and when the wall collapsed it was like a landslide. It went right back to the road," he said.

Mr Horne said it had been decided to carry out repair work immediately before the pleasure boat season started in earnest next week.

"We couldn't leave it like that for the whole summer. If it went another 18 inches we might not have any access road left," he said.

Mr Horne said water had been drained to a depth of only about 2ft so that workmen could stand in it to rebuild the wall, and canal users had been informed of the disruption.

"It was probably a combination of heavy rain and heavy traffic like dustbin wagons that led to this happening," he said.

"These walls are more than 200 years old and they weren't built to cope with really heavy traffic."

British Waterways is also carrying out further improvements to the same stretch of the canal from the top of Three Rise Locks eastwards towards Dubb Bridge over the next six weeks.

A new footpath is to be laid alongside Three Rise Locks, adjacent to the Damart premises; signs are to be added throughout the new length of canal, providing information and directions and indicating where mooring is available; work to bollards and rings in the footpath is to be carried out and the towpath surface is to be relaid where "ponding" has formed during wet periods.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.