Burying of Victorian bridge in Cumbria must be reversed, says council. National Highways to be forced to remove 1,644 tonnes of gravel and concrete used to infill bridge arch

9 comments

  1. National Highways thought that laws don’t apply to them and wasted nearly £600k instead of just repairing the bridge:

    > Eden district council’s planning committee […] unanimously deciding to refuse National Highways (NH) retrospective planning permission for a crude infilling project at Great Musgrave, Cumbria, that was widely condemned as “cultural vandalism”.

    > The planning committee’s decision means the agency will be required to reverse a project that submerged the 1862 bridge arch near Kirkby Stephen in 1,644 tonnes of gravel and concrete at a cost of £124,000. The council said it will now serve NH with an enforcement notice to restore the bridge to its previous state.

    > In a last-ditch offer to try to avoid the embarrassment and estimated £431,000 cost of removing the infill, NH offered to fund £450,000 to repair other structures on another stretch of disused railway near Great Musgrave if the concrete infill was allowed to remain.

  4. The fuck is wrong with this country, is there some kind of public sector competition to try and wank as many tax £s up the wall as physically possible?

  5. It was stupid of the government to give over ownership of all these old pieces of railway infrastructure over to Highways England a few years ago.

    Of course they assume some huge truck is going to use a tiny rural bridge, so they fill it in.

  6. The problem with national highways is that they’re not incentivised in any way, shape or form to think about anything except what is best for their own road network. They don’t think about the impact their actions have on the surrounding local network or environment until someone forces them – like here.

    National Highways recieve more funding than every other local highway authority put together but don’t have a second thought when they put a weight limit on a trunk road about where those trucks will go (hint, even less appropriate smaller local roads).

    It’s a joke that they offered to repair other structures if this could stay. If those other structures have reached a stage that requires repair, NH are obligated to keep them functional as they were here.

    Someone somewhere in NH saw that bridge needed repair, saw it went over a ‘disused’ route and didn’t think twice about implementing the cheapest option. I’ve worked with NH engineers, they’ve got a very bad habit of disregarding local authorities as country bumpkins who don’t understand highways.

    I hope they’ve learned their lesson. I also hope they don’t retaliate by not carrying out other essential works in the area under the guise of red tape.

  7. “if you let us do whatever we want without oversight we’ll fix some other things we’re obliged to fix but aren’t!” Yeah sweet deal let’s do that.

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