Waterway Notices / Tinsley No.3 Lock to Holmes Lock

Tinsley Flight will be offering passage on Mondays and Thursday only for the foreseeable future at the moment. Advanced booking is required for these days. Booking requests should be made through Customer Services on 0303 040 4040. Once a request has been received, our lock keeping team will confirm your booking time with you.

Passage through the Tinsley Flight on Thursday the 24th of September is now fully booked.

We are now also offering passage on Monday the 28th of September and Thursday the 1st of October. Advanced booking is required for these days. Booking requests should be made through Customer Services on 0303 040 4040. Once a request has been received, our lock keeping team will confirm your booking time with you.

Following further assessment and testing of the manual lock gates at Tinsley Lock Flight, we can offer a limited number of assisted passages on Thursday 24 September 2026.

Advance booking is required. Booking requests should be made through Customer Services on 0303 040 4040. Once a request has been received, our lock keeping team will confirm your booking time with you.

Passage will be supported by our lock keeping team and will operate under additional arrangements while further assessment and testing of the lock gates continues.

Due to the operating effort required at some of the lock gates, boaters may be asked, where they are able and willing, to assist our lock keepers with gate operation during their passage.

If you are unable to assist with manual gate operation, please make this known when making your booking so that appropriate staffing arrangements can be considered for your passage.

Further testing and assessment will continue this week. We will provide another update by Friday 25 September, confirming arrangements for future assisted passages.

Following a manual handling and operational assessment of the Tinsley Lock Flight, a number of lock gates have been identified as requiring further engineering investigation and improvement.

The assessment included load testing of selected lock gates and identified several locations where the forces required to operate the gates were above acceptable operating limits.

We have considered whether temporary operating arrangements could be introduced to allow assisted passage to continue. However, at this stage we are unable to provide suitable temporary operating guidance that would allow the affected locks to be operated safely.

The Tinsley Lock Flight from Lock 3 to Holmes Lock will therefore remain closed to navigation.

Passage to/from Sheffield to/from moorings sited at Tinsley Marina can still be facilitated following normal booking procedures. Our engineers will be carrying out further load testing and investigation of the affected gates, and will use the results to formulate a plan for the work required.

We appreciate that this closure will cause disruption and apologise for the inconvenience. We will provide a further update on Monday 21st September.