A bridge too far?
• Claimed maintenance savings illusory • Council never spent a penny maintaining bridge
PEMBROKESHIRE County Council did not estimate maintenance costs for or commit to maintaining the existing pedestrian footbridge over the Western Cleddau.
The Council acquired the existing footbridge from the previous owners of the Riverside Shopping Centre in Haverfordwest in 2020.
MAINTENANCE AND MISDIRECTION
Last week, an extraordinary cabinet meeting approved a controversial plan that includes replacing the footbridge.
During the meeting, the Cabinet Member for Finance, Cllr Alec Cormack, claimed building the new bridge would save the local authority £ 14,000 per year in maintenance costs.
That is an impressive sum.
Or it would be if the Council ever intended to spend £14,000 maintaining the existing footbridge.
Following the Cabinet meeting, we sought clarification about those maintenance costs and how they were calculated.
We can now confirm that when the Council completed its purchase of the Riverside Shopping Centre, it knew the existing footbridge needed replacement.
That was never discussed in the public sections of cabinet meetings or in the public documents when the decision was reached. The commercial confidentiality attached to the purchase decision meant that documents dealing with that aspect of the purchase were not made public. That is not unusual or exceptional. However, that position was not in the public domain when the Cabinet approved the Riverside purchase.
It follows from the above that the truth is that saving £14,000 a year is only realistic if the Council were to maintain the current bridge for the rest of its useful life.
It never intended to do so. Logically, therefore, any savings are notional and not actual.
As maintenance costs increase the longer a capital asset goes without maintenance, any future maintenance costs would be higher than might otherwise be the case.
For example, suppose you own a car, and its maintenance bill is £ 400 a year. If you don’t maintain the car, the eventual cost of repairing any damage will likely be much higher than otherwise. You might end up writing off the car and being forced to buy a new one.
The answers to our questions reveal that since the Council bought the Riverside Shopping Centre in 2020, it has spent nothing on maintaining the existing footbridge.
A Council spokesperson confirmed: “In May 2021, the Cabinet resolved that an application for the Levelling Up Fund be approved for submission to the UK Government for consideration, which included the proposal for the new bridge.
“In November 2021, we were notified that the Authority had successfully secured LUF funding.
“As a result – given that the existing Bridge was going to be replaced, and in line with the wider vision for the town centre, no maintenance work has been carried out – because the existing Bridge is due to be replaced.
Since Alec Cormack only became a councillor in 2022, it follows that if officers briefed him that maintenance costs would be “saved”, he was either misled or misinformed. That ship had sailed by the time he became Cabinet Member for Finance in May 2022.
The Herald understands that a likefor- like replacement footbridge would cost around £200,000.
Whether that cost represents an accurate estimate - and it seems low - there is a striking difference between the costs of replacing like- for- like and the ambitious and vastly more expensive project to which the Council is now committed.
In fairness, the replacement bridge is one part of a much wider enhancement that ties in with the Council’s Welsh and UK Government-backed plans to regenerate Haverfordwest Town Centre.
In addition, although the Westminster Government’s Levelling Up Fund was widely trailed as spreading economic benefits across the UK, a major part of that “Levelling Up” is focussed on projects to improve public spaces. As a slogan, therefore, “Levelling Up” suggests more direct intervention in local economies than the schemes it supports.
A spokesperson for Pembrokeshire County Council told us: “In 2021, an estimated quote for repair works for the existing bridge was obtained from a specialist painting company, albeit that was an estimate and did not include cost for a number of items, and was based on a number of assumptions.
“The estimate was obtained in the context of the shopping centre purchase, not about preserving the existing bridge. Separate thinking
REPLACEMENT BRIDGE FULFILS A DIFFERENT PURPOSE
went into enhancement and improvement, culminating in the successful LUF bid.
“Notwithstanding, it is noted that, in theory, maintenance work might provide 5-10 years elongated service life.
“The proposed Bridge will have 120 years’ service life. The specification for the new bridge includes the use of a Fluoropolymer paint system on the steelwork, which provides a 60-year coating life as opposed to the shorter service life referenced above.”
Counc i l lor Aled Thomas, the Conservative Group spokesman for Finance, told The Herald: “This project is yet another example of this poorlyled administration playing fast and loose with the public purse.
“It’s about time the leader was honest with the public about this project’s long-term maintenance and interest costs and issued an apology for seemingly misleading the public by saying repairing the existing bridge would cost more than this ‘Instagramable’ nightmare.
“It’s evident that in recent years PCC have totally forgotten that the point of local government is to deliver good basic services, and that needs to change at the May Annual General Meeting before our finances spin further out of control at the expense of the taxpayer.”
LACK OF CLARITY PLAGUES COUNCIL
If the Council had been clearer earlier about the need to replace the existing footbridge - for example, by presenting a clear figure for a like-forlike replacement—and the scope and intent of the Levelling Up Fund application, it might not have been plagued by controversy about the issue since.
Instead, the affair has become muddled with the benighted Haverfordwest Transport Interchange Project, which the Welsh Government funds.
Despite their separate funding streams, the Council could have been much clearer that the multi-million-pound projects were integrated and designed to deliver its regeneration aims.
Instead, officers and Cabinet members have been wrongfooted by poor information provided to the public and councillors.
The Council blundered into a row over the cost of the Transport Interchange, failed to learn lessons from that experience, and has blundered into another avoidable case of foot-inmouth.
Predicting savings predicated on spending money you never intended to spend is just the latest example of that phenomenon.