![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0_TCR_BRI_310721LockGateBRI.jpg\")
The Entrance Lock at the end of Bristol’s Floating Harbour(Image: Bristol City Council)<\/p>\nThe lock gates “continue to deteriorate”The Entrance Lock at the end of Bristol’s Floating Harbour(Image: Bristol City Council)<\/p>\n
A top councillor reassured residents that Bristol\u2019s Floating Harbour will not empty of water if the \u2018deteriorating\u2019 entrance lock gates suffer a \u2018catastrophic fail\u2019, as a committee approved \u00a3500,000 for crucial inspection work.<\/p>\n
Cllr Andrew Brown said other gates would keep the harbour in place if that happened.<\/p>\n
He spoke as Bristol City Council<\/a> economy and skills committee, which he chairs, allocated money from developer contributions to carry out a survey of the 150-year-old entrance lock<\/a>.<\/p>\n A report to the meeting<\/a> said it was beyond its anticipated lifespan and posed a \u2018significant health and safety risk\u2019.<\/p>\n It said: \u201cEntrance lock is a critical piece of infrastructure that allows vessel navigation in and out of the Floating Harbour<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cFollowing maintenance inspections detailed by the harbour engineering team and visits by an external contractor it has become apparent that the entrance gate locks continue to deteriorate, necessitating multiple interventions by the engineering team.<\/p>\n \u201cThe gates have surpassed their expected lifespan, increasing the risk of failure, and pose a significant health and safety risk.<\/p>\n \u201cTo obtain a complete understanding of the current condition of the gates, whilst also developing a set of robust interim and long-term options for the area, an upcoming programme of survey and principal inspection work is planned.\u201d<\/p>\n Cllr Brown (Lib Dem, Hengrove<\/a> & Whitchurch Park) told the meeting on Monday, June 2: \u201cI\u2019m particularly pleased that we\u2019re getting on with the exercise to survey and inspect the harbour entrance locks.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a number of months ago now when the previous harbour master on our regular catch-up calls said he had bad news and good news \u2013 the bad news being the lock gates were end-of-life, the good news being that if the lock gates fail, we do have other gates which will keep the harbour in.<\/p>\n \u201cSo even if they catastrophically fail, it doesn\u2019t affect the harbour as a whole other than from an operational point of view of getting things in and out.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want anyone thinking we\u2019re about to lose all the water in the harbour overnight.\u201d<\/p>\n Full council assigned the money, which is from developer contributions called strategic Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL), for the inspection when it passed the annual budget in February, and Monday\u2019s committee agreed to confirm it for that purpose.<\/p>\n Cllr Richard Eddy (Conservative, Bishopsworth) said: \u201cI obviously fully support the drawdown from strategic CIL of the \u00a3500,000 for studies on the lock gates.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously once we\u2019ve undertaken that we can look at the range of options, the costs and timescales.\u201d<\/p>\n He asked how long the gates were likely to keep functioning.<\/p>\n Principal flood risk manager Matthew Sugden replied: \u201cThe purpose of this \u00a3500,000 is to maximise the remaining life of the existing structure.<\/p>\n \u201cIt could be years, it could be months.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to do that survey work and the initial repairs to answer that question.\u201d<\/p>\n The entrance lock is the way into and out of the Floating Harbour for boats from the River Avon at Cumberland Basin.<\/p>\n Try BristolLive Premium for FREE without intrusive ads and brilliant new features<\/p>\n No intrusive adverts, pop-ups or distractions! Just our brilliant content presented in the best way possible.<\/p>\n Get your free one-month trial by visiting the ‘Premium’ tab on the BristolLive app now (auto renews annually at \u00a319.99).<\/p>\n If you haven’t got it already, get started by downloading our app here on iPhone<\/a> or here on Android<\/a>. If you already have the app but can’t see the ‘Premium’ section, you’ll need to check for the latest update. More info here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The lock gates “continue to deteriorate”The Entrance Lock at the end of Bristol’s Floating Harbour(Image: Bristol City Council)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[14343,381,3893,748,527,393,4884,800,10001,11518,285,14995,16,15,10000],"class_list":{"0":"post-162153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bishopsworth","9":"tag-bristol","10":"tag-bristol-city-council","11":"tag-britain","12":"tag-conservative-party","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-harbourside","16":"tag-hengrove","17":"tag-liberal-democrats","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-sailing","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-whitchurch"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114634811317888621","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}