Councillors have raised major worries about the delayed refurbishment of the Tyne Bridge – and have warned against repeating mistakes that left it in such an abject state.
It emerged before Christmas that the famous crossing is in an even worse condition than had previously been feared, as it awaits a long overdue restoration. Adding the current inflation crisis to the extra repairs required means that the cost of the much-needed maintenance project is spiralling well above what was planned, while the works have been pushed back to autumn of this year.
A funding package of £41.4m, mostly funded by the Government, to repair both the Tyne Bridge and the Central Motorway was agreed last summer – but council bosses admitted in December that they may have to delay or abandon some of the motorway works to focus on the grade II* listed bridge. At Newcastle City Council’s overview and scrutiny committee on Thursday, Lib Dem councillor Nick Cott said the situation was an “urgent issue”.
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Questioning where any extra funding needed for the works might come from, he said: “I would hope this is successful, but I know the Government is scaling back funding and projects. This is a really important issue – what is the likelihood of success and, if not successful, are there alternatives in the pipeline?
“Otherwise, are we going to be here next year and the year after and the year after that? We have talked about whether it is done for the centenary of the bridge [in 2028] and time is going by.”
Coun Cott, the committee’s chair, added: “In the old days, local authorities would have had the resources to be able to do many more of these things themselves. But with the way in which things work now, local authorities have very little resources to handle these things without getting money from central Government.”
Labour councillor Stephen Lambert said the Tyne Bridge is “symbolic of the North East” and essential to the social, cultural, and economic fabric of the region.
As well as being in dire need of a repaint, the crossing had a series of structural problems that need resolving – including corroding steel, cracked concrete, leaking drains and damage to its road surface and pavements. Engineers estimate that it will take between 36 and 42 months to complete the massive refurbishment job, the first major maintenance on the Tyne Bridge for more than two decades.
Coun Colin Ferguson, who has recently replaced Coun Cott as leader of the city’s Lib Dem opposition, asked what was being done to ensure that the iconic structure is not allowed to fall into such disrepair in the decades to come. He said: “There is a huge question about, if the costs increase further, what is the wriggle room and what is our contingency?
“And how do we make sure this does not happen again? Big infrastructure maintenance projects are constant and ongoing, and we are not unique in coming up against infrastructure maintenance issues and asking how we are going to deal with this.
“I would dearly love to know that someone is asking what we can learn from this so that in 25 years’ time we know what happened this time that meant we were years late and causing the thing to be more complex than it needed to be.”
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