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		MEP helps top tourist spot Tuesday 8th November 2005 East Midlands Conservative MEP Roger Helmer today re-visited one of Leicestershire’s top tourist attractions to give his support to an ongoing £2.8 million project to conserve and improve elements of Foxton Locks. The Grand Union Canal, with its series of ten locks, known as the Foxton Staircase, is a remarkable feat of engineering that is currently undergoing a major project aimed at improving the destination for visitors and the local community. The project, which is being run by the Foxton Locks Partnership, has the ultimate aim of bringing the site's Inclined Plane boatlift back into full use. Mr Helmer met with James Clifton, Foxton Locks Project manager for British Waterways and Cllr Graham Hart, Vice-Chairman of the Foxton Locks Partnership for a tour of the site and was able to see the plans in action. While the project currently involves dewatering and dredging the bottom basin of the canal, future work will include a major engineering project to repair and rewater the currently disused top arm of the canal, which once fed boats into the top of the Inclined Plane Boat Lift. Mr Helmer, a great supporter of the Foxton Locks project has previously visited the site in November 2004 to help with the planting of 2,500 trees as part of National Tree Week and to attend the opening of the Foxton Locks Inn, which re-opened in May 2005, having been fully refurbished and extended. Details of the ongoing work at the Foxton Locks site can be found at www.britishwaterways.co.uk or www.foxtonlocks.com