Editing British Waterways (section)

===Late 20th century===
As the century progressed, leisure boating on the canals began to expand, with numbers reaching 20,000 by the early 1980s.<ref name="BW History"/> Additionally, the work of voluntary restoration groups succeeded in restoring some waterways to their former condition. However, despite this steady progress throughout the 1970s and 1980s, organisations such as [[English Heritage]] criticised the newly named British Waterways for failing to provide "adequate training or access to professional advice [for British Waterways officers] on the conservation of historic structures".<ref name="BW History"/>

However, by the late 1990s the canal network and British Waterways were flourishing; revenues generated for canal maintenance reached £100&nbsp;million for the first time in 1998,<ref name="BW History"/> large grants from the [[Heritage Lottery Fund]] allowed the canal network to expand again by restoring former canals<ref name="BW History"/> and additional funding was announced for British Waterways in 1999 by the then [[Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom|Deputy Prime Minister]] [[John Prescott]].<ref name="BW History"/> By the early 2000s, boating numbers had overtaken the previous industrial revolution high<ref name="BW History"/> and the canal network was officially classed as 'safe' following the completion of all outstanding safety works.<ref name="BW History"/>