Different scale

The HRE team is small and, even if they had no direct responsibility for it, every member felt the impact of the Queensbury Tunnel saga due to the self-inflicted reputational damage it wreaked. In October 2019, preparations for the emergency shaft infill scheme were kept secret from the outside world, but its impending implementation - and the exploitation of Class Q - was understood by all.

Despite its limited scope, Class Q caught the eye of others within NH as it apparently offered a means of sanctioning works unilaterally, without engagement with the normal planning process, statutory consultees and members of the public. And so the opportunity was taken to dip a toe in the water by gauging the response of local planning authorities (LPA) to three bridge infill schemes under Class Q. For convenience, this would involve consciously ‘misunderstanding’ the legislation.

For example, on 14 October 2019, Jacobs, the consultants who act on National Highways’ behalf, wrote to the Borough Council of King’s Lynn & West Norfolk (BCKLWN) to inform planning officers of proposed works to a bridge at Congham which carried a little-used rural lane. A collection of ugly but non-structural defects were described, as well as the recent failure of a capacity assessment.

The letter went on to state that “As the structure represents an ongoing and increasing risk to public safety and is owned by the Secretary of State for Transport, so is deemed 'Crown property', we propose to (undertake repairs/demolish/infill) as 'permitted development' in line with the 'Town & Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, Schedule 2, Part 19, Class Q”.

This was clearly a template letter - intended for wider use - such that the ‘delete as applicable’ reference to repairs/demolition/infilling had been overlooked. Notably, it did not point out - for the avoidance of doubt - that the scheme was intended to be permanent and the LPA’s written consent for retention beyond six months was therefore needed.

The Council wrote back on 21 November 2019, indicating that “From the information provided we will not have objections [to] the works proposed”. Why would they, given the implied emergency threatening serious damage to human welfare?

And so, on 22 March 2021, 17 months after the Class Q letter was sent, National Highways’ contractor turned up at Congham to start the works, the community being completely oblivious to what was about to occur.

By this time, Class Q infill schemes had already been completed at two other locations - Wellinditch bridge in Essex (Nov/Dec 2019) and Benton Road bridge, Ilford (Aug/Sept 2020) - all three structures being the responsibility of the same HRE regional engineer.

A broader threat

The Historical Railways Estate was foisted on the Highways Agency (HA) in September 2013, after the Government’s ‘quango cull’ brought the shutters down on British Railways Board (Residuary). Most of BRB(R)’s staff were also transferred alongside the responsibilities. HA ultimately morphed into National Highways.

In its first seven years, the new custodian infilled 45 bridges at a cost to the taxpayer of £6.7M. But this represented a drop in the ocean in the context of an estate comprising more than 3,000 structures.

The company’s broader aspiration - as detailed in its draft Future Long Term Plan, submitted for consideration by its Board in 2016 - was to move more generally to an ‘intervention-based approach’, recognising that “The optimal option always removes or mostly reduces all future liabilities and mitigates the risk of reputational or financial harm to [NH] in each case.”

The specific aim was to achieve at least 25 years of future life from each asset, although infilling would deliver far more than that. The total number of structures would be reduced by 10-15% through demolitions, posing a threat to perhaps 480 of them (2016 figure).

Inevitably, the biggest obstacle was money. As the Plan made clear, “Based upon the initial automatic allocation of each structure to a category and using standard costings for each type of intervention the initial range of estimated costs is between £370M and £560M” for a works programme lasting ten years.

It’s known that development work towards implementation of the Plan was pushed forward as, in 2018, an email exchange between NH and a stakeholder identified two bridges in Cumbria for infilling in Years 2 and 7 of the programme.

In summer 2020, NH staff members were making it known to allies that its annual works budget was going to increase from £9.07M in 2020/21 to £36M, effectively a four-fold uplift. Three new firms - Beaver Bridges, Bethell Construction and Dyer & Butler - were awarded framework contracts, adding significant additional capacity to the three existing providers of Balfour Beatty Construction, Hammond ECS and AmcoGiffen. Public records indicate that the seven-year deals had a combined headline value of £254M, or £36.3M per year.

According to NH’s own figures, the five-year programme of interventions that became public knowledge in the first few days of 2021 involved the infilling of 115 bridges, or 23 each year - again, effectively a four-fold increase. Delivery would present many practical and managerial challenges, not least the time, effort and cost involved in getting all these schemes through the statutory planning process and the possibility that heritage considerations, repurposing proposals, ecology concerns and/or concerted local opposition could cause some of them to fall by the wayside.

How could these potential pitfalls be overcome?