‘Tunnel’s £2.46m repair bill could have been saved by £50 payment’

A DISUSED Victorian tunnel earmarked to become England’s longest underground cycle route flooded because of a Highways England blunder and taxpayers have been left to foot a £2.46million repair bill, campaigners have claimed.

The abandoned passageway, connecting Bradford and Halifax in West Yorkshire, is situated 400ft beneath the Pennines and the village of Queensbury.

Cycle campaigners want the route brought back into public use so riders can avoid pedalling up hills and believe it could prove to be a tourist attraction

But problems arose when the tunnel, which was created as part of a Victorian railway and was shut in 1956, became flooded.

Campaigners claim Highways England is to blame for failing to pay an annual £50 rent fee on a neighbouring pumping station.

Graeme Bickerdike, of the Queensbury Tunnel Society, alleged the situation led to the pumping station being switched off, flooding the tunnel with 8.2 million gallons of water.

Highways England said it never received the rent demands, and claims they were sent to the Department for Transport, which owns the tunnel. However, according to the terms of the lease, the £50 should have been paid “whether formally demanded or not”.

Mr Bickerdike said: “Highways England described it as a ‘simple but unfortunate administrative error’. But there’s now 37ft of water at that end.”

Campaigners claim the operation to drain the tunnel will cost at least £2.46million – but would have been £560,000 had the pumping station still been working.