Officials have recommended that the government’s roads agency should remove hundreds of tonnes of concrete it used to infill a Victorian bridge in Cumbria.
National Highways (NH) faced widespread condemnation last year after it submerged a 1862 bridge arch at Great Musgrave, near Kirby Stephen, in 1,644 tonnes of gravel and concrete. It was accused of “cultural vandalism” in the House of Lords, and the outcry prompted the government to pause NH’s plans to infill dozens of other Victorian bridges across England.
The agency’s application for retrospective planning permission from Eden district council for Great Musgrave work received 911 letters of objection and only two letters in support.
Local planning officers have recommended that the council’s planning committee refuse permission at a meeting next week. If the committee agrees, NH will be obliged to restore the bridge to its former condition, at an estimated cost of £431,000. It spent £124,000 last year on infilling work.
On Wednesday a report to members of the committee said the action had caused “considerable visual harm to the appearance of the bridge”.
In its planning submission, NH argued that the work was necessary to strengthen the bridge. But the planning report said NH had submitted no evidence to justify the project or the costs involved.
The report said: “It would ultimately have been more cost-effective to directly repair and strengthen the bridge compared to the cost of infilling, removing the infill, then repair and strengthen.”
The report noted that infilling the bridge, over a disused railway line, had “seriously compromised” plans to reopen the railway and link vintage lines between Warcop and Kirkby Stephen in the Eden valley.
It said the infilling flouted a statutory local plan that commits the council to “attach great weight to the conservation and enhancement of the local environment, heritage assets and their setting, which help to make Eden a distinctive place”.
Graeme Bickerdike, a member of the HRE Group, which works to safeguard the historical railways estate and is campaigning against National Highways’ programme of bridge infilling and demolition, welcomed the advice to refuse planning permission.
He said: “This was an opportunistic act of vandalism, fuelled by a destructive policy and questionable competence. National Highways’ own inspection reports recorded this bridge as being in fair condition, with only a handful of minor defects. And yet NH claimed that infilling was needed to prevent its failure and ‘avert a collapse’, invoking emergency development powers to circumvent the council’s request to stop the works.
“We urge Eden district council’s planning committee to accept the officers’ recommendation and instruct NH to restore the bridge to its previous good state. A line has to be drawn under the loss of these historic structures, the value of which is becoming ever greater as we recognise the social and economic benefits of developing new sustainable transport routes.”
Last month NH’s head of the historical railways estate programme, Hélène Rossiter, said: “We carefully considered several options to strengthen the bridge from a 17-tonne to 44-tonne weight limit, making sure we engaged with planners at the relevant local authority to make them aware of our work and ensuring all relevant processes and procedures were followed. We determined that the infill was crucial to the safety of the public and making future use of the structure viable.”
On Thursday she added: “The formal process for the planning application has not yet concluded. Once the final outcome is confirmed, we will carefully consider next steps to ensure the bridge remains safe and to meet any recommendations from the planning authority. We will provide updates in due course.”
