Campaigners seek reversal of further bridge infills
CAMPAIGNERS who want to stop redundant railway bridges from being infilled claim that four more schemes carried out by National Highways have “questionable legal status” and must be reversed.
Hard on the heels of Eden Council’s ruling that 1,600 tonnes of aggregates and concrete must be removed from a bridge at Great Musgrave in Cumbria
(RAIL 968), the HRE Group believes it has identified more bridges where emergency development powers used to carry out the work have expired.
Following legal advice, the HRE Group (an alliance of walking, cycling and heritage campaigners, engineers and greenway developers) says that National Highways was wrong to use emergency powers created to address temporary problems with the structures, because the work carried out is clearly intended to be permanent.
The first location named is the 1923 steel and concrete Congham Road bridge over the former M&GN King’s Lynn-Fakenham line, which is one of several identified in Norfolk County Council’s walking and cycling strategy. The route was blocked by NH contractors’ infilling of the structure in March/April 2021 at a cost of £127,000.
In Yorkshire, the £133,000 spent infilling Rudgate Road bridge at Newton Kyme, on the old
Wetherby-Tadcaster line, is claimed to have spoiled the prospects of completing a cycle path.
Two other structures, near South Woodham Ferrers in Essex and in Ilford in north-east London, have also been infilled at a combined cost of £312,000.
HRE contends that the emergency powers dictated that “the infill should have been removed from these structures within 12 months of work starting unless written consent to retain it had been granted by the local
planning authorities”.
It says that its request to NH in February for copies of these approvals has not yielded a response, and that it has written to the four local authorities concerned requesting confirmation of their positions. Selby District Council has begun its own investigation into the Rudgate Road infill.
It is now nine years since NH was given the task of managing 3,100 redundant railway structures on behalf of the Department for Transport. It has spent around £8 million infilling 51 bridges, but had hired six companies and consultants to carry out around £300m of such work over a decade.
The programme was halted by the Government in July last year. National Highways has established a Stakeholder Advisory Forum to review all future major works to HRE structures, but confirmed that outcomes for 68 bridges and tunnels previously threatened with infilling or demolition are still awaited.
It added that any future major works will be the subject of review and consultation with its Stakeholder Advisory Forum, established in October 2021.
In June, Eden Council rejected a retrospective planning application for the 1861 bridge at Great Musgrave. The aggregate and concrete will have to be removed by October 11 next year.