Decision on infilled bridge set to affect national policy
THE future of the disused railway overbridge at Great Musgrave in Cumbria is likely to influence the fate of hundreds of other threatened structures nationwide.
Eden District Council planners will decide this month whether government-sponsored National Highways’ decision to pour 1,600 tonnes of aggregate and concrete underneath the bridge last July, at a cost of £124,000, was unlawful.
If the council refuses an application for retrospective planning permission, NH could have to restore the bridge to its original condition at a cost of a further £30,000. The 906 people who registered their objections to the council believe that this should happen anyway.
After a year-long campaign, the HRE Group (an alliance of engineers, sustainable transport advocates and greenway developers) has written to Baroness Vere, the Minister responsible for the Historical Railways Estate, describing NH’s actions as “clumsy, disreputable, and suggesting questionable competence”.
The group wants the management of disused structures to be transferred to Great British Railways.
NH’s response is that even if the concrete was removed, the Great Musgrave bridge would still need strengthening at an estimated cost of £431,000. It denied it used emergency powers to carry out the work and said Eden Council had “considered the works to be permitted development”.
However, HRE said the council had recommended NH stop work while planning requirements were reviewed, but that NH refused and invoked emergency powers to continue.
HRE’s detailed engineering study found the structure to be in fair condition, in no danger of collapse, and requiring no repairs. Free access is needed underneath it to fulfil any hopes of reviving the fledgling Stainmore and Eden Valley tourist railways.
NH said that infilling is “fully reversible”, but the independent report suggests that the bridge’s stonework and mortar is in fact likely to suffer accelerated degradation because water can no longer escape.
Historical Railways Estate Director Richard Marshall said: “Our work at Great Musgrave has preserved the bridge while land ownership issues and a new crossing over the River Eden are resolved.
“We have already committed to work with any local heritage railway and the local authority to remove the infill, at no cost to them, when the time is right.”
Stainmore Railway Company Project Manager Mike Thompson countered: “National Highways has wasted a huge amount of taxpayers’ money on a structure that needed nothing doing to it. The infill must come out, sooner rather than later.”
The outcome of the Great Musgrave debacle is bound to influence the future of what are claimed to be other ailing structures among NH’s portfolio of 3,100 disused railway bridges, abutments, tunnels, culverts and viaducts - 70% of them in England, 19% in Scotland and 11% in Wales. NH (formerly Highways England) has had responsibility for them since BRB (Residuary) was abolished in September 2013.
Until recently, its course of action had been clear. In 2020, it allocated £254 million over seven years to make structures safe. Although it was once claimed this totalled 134, the list has since been reduced by exactly half.
Many local authorities have now told NH that planning permission is required for their infilling schemes, while others have raised objections or imposed specific constraints.