An important document which highlights how waterways can combat social exclusion was launched in the town this week.

The report was written by Bob Watson MBE, the director of the Sobriety Project at the Goole-based Yorkshire Waterways Museum, and a member of the Inland Waterways Advisory Council (IWAC).

Mr Watson, who wrote the 12-page report in about six weeks, explained: "It has come about through the IWAC, they were asked by DEFRA to look at the benefits that inland waterways can provide to people that are disadvantaged and excluded.

"The report has got explanations and case studies and individuals."

Called "Using Inland Waterways to Combat the Effects of Social Exclusion" the report reveals how a small number of groups have cooperated to deliver a range of important social benefits, including:

n young people at risk of offending gaining transferable skills to help them find work;

n older people in care and people with disabilities becoming more independent after attending waterway residential courses;

n offenders on community service orders carrying out environmental improvements in the community;

n young people from different ethnic backgrounds learning to live and work together on a canal boat, promoting teamwork and social cohesion in the wider community.

The publication also recommends that the government should recognise and promote the value of inland waterway projects which help combat social exclusion.

IWAC chairman John Edmonds said: "With 12 million people in Britain below the poverty line, with one of the largest prison populations in Europe and with a United Nations Children's Fund report suggesting that we have some of the unhappiest children in the developed world, we need every weapon in the armoury to combat social exclusion.

"Eighty per cent of people in Britain live within five miles of a canal or river - this means that inland waterways are ideally placed to combat social exclusion within people's own local communities."

Dr Christine Johnstone, head of Wakefield Museums and Galleries and also an IWAC member visited the Waterways Museum on Tuesday to launch the document.

Ilona Csatlos Graudins, a former offender who served the last part of her sentence at HMP Askham Grange at York and who provides one of the case studies in the report, attended the launch to answer questions.