Don't trust Waterscape

On the Waterscape stoppages page it says:

Plan your cruising with our regularly updated listings of stoppages and restrictions.

Occasionally, canals, rivers and towpaths are closed for maintenance work. We list all stoppages on British Waterways and Environment Agency navigations as soon as they are notified to us, but emergency work may cause sudden closures.

So naturally I checked this page before we made our plans to black Warrior next week before heading back to Bill Fen.

I selected 'River Nene' and 'stoppages' and put in the dates 25th October to 10th November, and I got this result (which is what is still coming up as of this morning):

Stoppages Results

There are no stoppages reported at this time

Hooray. We can get the blacking done at Stretton, and get back to Bill Fen before any stoppages affect us (there are some on the canal system, but not until mid November). So Jim arranged to get Warrior craned out, and back in again a week later, and to hire a pressure washer, and to get tins of blacking, and we were all set to go up on Sunday, when yesterday I got an email from Lyn at Bill Fen asking has I seen the EA stoppage list for the Nene which she kindly attached, and it said this:

ENVIRONMENT AGENCY

ANGLIAN REGION

NAVIGATION CLOSURE NOTICE

Section 15 Anglian Water Authority Act 1977

RIVER NENE

DATE OF ISSUE 1 October 2009

LOCATION Various River Nene Locks (see below)

TYPE OF RESTRICTION Navigation Closure

DURATION Billing Monday 2/11/09 to Sunday 29/11/09

This makes rather a big difference and looks like it will now mean a complete change of plan. Thanks to Lyn the information arrived just in time to stop us getting stuck.

So Waterscape claim to list all stoppages on BW and EA navigations as soon as they are notified to them, yet, on October 16th are still not showing stoppages announced by the EA on October 1st.

It would surely be better not to have stoppages search page on the website at all, than to have one promulgating misinformation.