After years of waiting, hoping, and watching one of the North East’s great symbols fall into an ever more embarrassing state, Tyneside finally got the news it so desperately needed last week.
The Tyne Bridge will at last be rescued from its state of rust and disrepair, with a £41m renovation programme for both it and the Central Motorway approved by the government. It is, without doubt, a colossal relief and fantastic news for the region, meaning we can hopefully now look forward to celebrating the famous crossing’s centenary in 2028 with it back to its best.
But the arduous battle to get here has not been forgotten. The need for a major influx of government funding to give the Tyne Bridge its first major maintenance since the turn of the century has been high on local transport chiefs’ agenda since at least 2015 and the bid approved last week has been sat with the Department for Transport (DfT) since summer 2019.
As MPs debated the government’s Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill, Boris Johnson's flagship policy was likened to the "Hunger Games" as Labour’s Lisa Nandy warned that cash-strapped councils were being forced to fight each other for vital funding.
That has been a common complaint about local leaders here for some time. Former Newcastle City Council leader Nick Forbes said this week: “I am absolutely delighted that the money to refresh the Tyne Bridge has finally been approved. But this is not a sustainable way of funding our ageing infrastructure.
“Having to enter a beauty pageant in competition against other areas and put our case over time after time is very time-consuming, frustrating, and does not allow for proper long-term strategic planning.”
There has been a quiet confidence behind the scenes at Newcastle Civic Centre for many months now that this money was coming, that there was no prospect of ministers allowing such an internationally-recognised icon to keep deteriorating. The bid’s approval was a welcome gift for the city council’s new leader, Nick Kemp, in his first full week in office – but he also warned that the government’s Levelling Up funding system is “broken”.
He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “What if you had a different bridge? What if it’s the Redheugh Bridge? Would there be the interest?
“We are maybe fortunate that the Tyne Bridge emotionally resonates with people and would the government turn around and say ‘We are the government that allowed the Tyne Bridge to fail’? They are not going to do that. That is our good fortune, but it shows the short-term of naivety of central government right now.”
Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner Kim McGuinness added that “we need to be clear to Government that painting this bridge is not 'levelling up the north’”.
Levelling Up secretary Michael Gove attacked Labour for offering “nothing”, insisting that the government was “making sure that every part of our United Kingdom is firing on all cylinders”.
A spokesperson for the DfT said in response to local leaders’ complaints: “This claim is nonsense - we delegated the prioritisation process to sub-national Transport Bodies who worked with local areas to look at which schemes in their areas need to be funded. Transport for the North identified Tyne Bridge as one of their priorities for investment and the Department worked with Newcastle City Council to guide them through the process.”
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