A BOLTON man battling against cuts in money for canal and river maintenance takes his fight to the House of Commons next week.

John Fletcher, aged 62, of Smithills, is national chairman of the Inland Waterways Association, which campaigns to preserve the canal network.

On Tuesday, he will oversee a flotilla of 30 canal boats along the Thames, past the Palace of Westminster, in protest at cuts to British Waterways' funding.

Government grants, which help the preservation of the country's 2,200 miles of canal, have been slashed by £21m in three years.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced further cuts of £4.5m last summer, which resulted in the loss of 180 jobs.

Mr Fletcher said: "The cuts came in such an unexpected way and the jobs went at the drop of a hat.

"It means there have been severe cutbacks in the amount of work that can be undertaken.

"Government funding pays for maintenance of towpaths, bridges, locks, improvements to attract leisure users and major restoration projects, such as the work being undertaken on the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal."

Defra has since announced thst next year's grant for British waterways will be frozen at £55m, while funding for the Environment Agency, which looks after Britain's rivers, is also under pressure.

Since learning of the cuts Mr Fletcher has been campaigning to get waterways back up the Government's priority list.

He helped organise a national blockade of canals last November to highlight the issues and will meet environment minister Barry Gardner this week.

"Next Tuesday we will be taking a number of MPs and members of the media out on to the Thames to look at the flotilla passing the House of Commons," he said.

"It has taken a tremendous amount of organising.

"We've only just got clearance from the Metropolitan Police because there's an exclusion zone for boats outside the Houses of Parliament."

More than 200 MPs, including Bolton South East MP Brian Iddon and Bolton North East MP David Crausby, have signed an early day motion calling for the canals' funding to be restored.