The government’s road agency will be forced to remove hundreds of tonnes of concrete it used to bury a Victorian bridge arch despite offering a £450,000 sweetener to allow the controversial scheme to stay.
Eden district council’s planning committee resisted the offer by 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 widespread outcry over last year’s scheme prompted a government-ordered pause to the agency’s plans to infill or demolish dozens of other historic railway bridges elsewhere in the UK.
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.
The decision comes after the council received more than 900 objections to the scheme, and only two in support. It marks a victory for campaigners who argued the bridge was structurally sound and required only inexpensive repointing repairs to make it safe. They also argued that infilling the bridge over a disused railway line would thwart plans to reconnect two heritage railways in the Eden valley.
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.
The head of NH’s historical railways estate programme, Hélène Rossiter, told the committee that if it approved the application, NH would ringfence the money that would have been spent on removing the infill to improve other legacy structures in the Eden Valley.
She also claimed infilling Great Musgrave Bridge had been necessary to make it safe, and said it could be removed if a viable use for the disused line under the bridge could be found.
The cash offer was supported by David Pemberton, the director of Railway Paths, the charity that owns the structures and would be the main beneficiary of the donation. Pemberton said the money would help reopen seven miles of disused track north between Warcop and Appleby.
But members of the committee followed the advice of their planning officers, who in a report last week recommended that planning permission be refused.
In the report the council’s assistant development director, Fergus McMorrow, said the NH’s infilling had caused “considerable harm to the visual appearance of the bridge” and “fails to complement or enhance the area or protect features or characteristics of local importance.”
Graeme Bickerdike, a member of the HRE Group, which works to safeguard the historical railways estate, spoke against the application.
In reference to the offer of £450,000 for the nearby structures, he told the committee: “Matters relating to other local railway assets are clearly not relevant to this application.”
After the decision he said: “We are obviously delighted.”
“Under its new approach to managing the Historical Railways Estate, NH has committed to submitting planning applications for all infill schemes. As this one has been rejected, we expect the company to respect the outcome of democratic process and remove the 1,600 tonnes of aggregate and concrete.
“National Highways must recognise the strength of feeling over this issue and its many negative impacts. Concerns have been expressed about the company’s behaviour and the reputational damage inflicted on the civil engineering profession. They need to do the right thing but don’t seem to understand the concept.|
“Surely everyone now recognises that a line needs to be drawn under this sorry saga; the only way to do that is to allow Great Musgrave Bridge to resume its role as a valued heritage asset with a potentially useful future.”
After the decision Rossiter said: “We respect Eden district council’s decision regarding our planning application to retain the works at Great Musgrave, and will not be appealing.
“We have listened to the feedback on this issue and earlier this year amended our processes to ensure full planning permission is sought before carrying out work like this in the future.
“We will also no longer consider the infilling of any structures as part of our future plans, unless there is absolutely no alternative.”
