Dispute over costs for tunnel
CAMPAIGNERS SAY more public money has been committed to the partial infilling of Queensbury Tunnel than it would cost to repair it.
In September 2018, when Highways England began a project to abandon the structure, preparatory works were costed at £545,000 and programmed to take four months.
But the Government-owned roads company had twice failed to pay the £50 annual rent on a pumping station that had been installed to keep the tunnel dewatered, say campaigners, resulting in the landowner turning it off. As a result, twoand-a-half years later, the preparatory works are still only 70 per cent complete, campaigners say, and £7.53 million has so far been committed to them through contract variations.
The main abandonment scheme could add a further £3 million to the bill, they say.
Engineering consultants costed the tunnel’s repair at £6.9 million in 2018, campaigners say, whilst a Sustrans study found that a greenway passing through the historic passageway would return £37.6 million in social, economic and tourism benefits over 30 years.
No substantive works have taken place in the tunnel since mid-September, say campaigners, but documents they have obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that, according to campaigners, Highways England then approved the payment of £263,857 to its contractor, AMCO-Giffen, to cover ‘running costs’ and a round-the-clock security presence in the weeks through to Christmas, equating to more than £3,000 per day. Lone workers were stationed in a van at the tunnel entrance which is protected by 10-feet high steel gates, anti-vandal paint and razor wire.
Then, in January, Highways
England issued a contract variation valued at almost £2 million for the installation of a concrete plug below a ventilation shaft located 500 metres into the floodwater which currently reaches the tunnel’s midpoint, campaigners say.
“There’s been a scandalous waste of public money here,” says Graeme Bickerdike, Engineering Coordinator for the Queensbury Tunnel Society. “We’ve now reached a point where the tunnel’s abandonment could cost £10 million as a result of Highways England’s failure to pay the rent on the pumping station. Nobody has been held accountable for the huge burden placed on the taxpayer. The money could have paid for the tunnel’s repair, transforming this outstanding feat of Victorian engineering into an asset that could be a source of delight and adventure, delivering benefits for generations to come.”
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