Agenda item

RESOLVED:

1.    That support for the delivery of the Farnham Road Bridge Project was confirmed.

2.    That an agreement with Network Rail for payment towards improvements to Farnham Road Bridge would be entered into.

3.    That officers will work with Network Rail to confirm the Surrey CC contribution to the scheme.

4.    That the Cabinet Member for Highways and Deputy Director will engage with stakeholders to identify alternate funding sources in order to limit or remove the need to reduce the existing capital programme or borrow to fund this scheme.

Reason for decision:

To enable the Farnham Road Bridge scheme to take place to ensure the ongoing safety of the travelling public and economic prosperity of Guildford Town Centre.

[The decisions on this item can be called in by the Environment and Infrastructure Select Committee]

The Cabinet Member for Highways introduced this report that explained how the Farnham Road Bridge owned by Network Rail has B4 liability, which meant that Network Rail were responsible for providing a load capacity of 24T.

As the bridge is on a principal road network, Surrey CC requires the bridge to have a load bearing capacity of 40/44T in line with EU Directive EU/2015/71. As agreed in works agreements with the railway undertaker where the County is required to provide for load-bearing capacity higher than the railway undertaker is required by law to provide, the County will meet the cost.

The structure has been identified as critically deficient for unrestricted traffic loading meaning that if work is not carried out to strengthen the bridge the weight limit will have to be reduced to 7.5T.  This would result in a scenario where heavy goods vehicles and buses will not be able to use the bridge which would have a devastating impact on residents and businesses.

Surrey Highways officers and Network Rail had identified a preferred scheme option which would restore the bridge to 40/44T capacity and therefore enable the bridge to remain open to traffic into the future.  The preferred scheme would provide a 60 year design life for the bridge.  The cost of the preferred scheme option has been estimated at £4,461,000.

Past experience of these type of schemes both within Surrey and in other local authority areas has identified that the cost of increasing the load bearing capacity to 24T (Network Rail’s responsibility) generally equates to approximately 20% of the total scheme cost and the additional work to increase capacity to 40/44T (Surrey CC’s responsibility) generally equates to approximately 80% of the scheme costs.

Surrey CC and Network Rail officers were reviewing the costings and funding allocations with a view to ensure equitable apportionment of funding which accounts for the fact that a lower cost scheme could increase the capacity to 40/44T, but that the chosen scheme has additional benefits for Network Rail. 

Funding for this scheme was not accounted for within the Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP).  Surreys CC’s contribution could be up to £3.5m.  Approximately £650,000 had been identified within existing Highways budgets and therefore up to £2.9m still needed to be identified.

The Deputy Leader explained how important this bridge was for Guildford and if it was reduced to 7.5T this would mean a 4km diversion for buses, cars and lorries. Boroughs and districts, and partners, had been asked if they could help with costs but financial cuts were affecting everyone.

RESOLVED:

1.    That support for the delivery of the Farnham Road Bridge Project was confirmed.

2.    That an agreement with Network Rail for payment towards improvements to Farnham Road Bridge would be entered into.

3.    That officers will work with Network Rail to confirm the Surrey CC contribution to the scheme.

4.    That the Cabinet Member for Highways and Deputy Director will engage with stakeholders to identify alternate funding sources in order to limit or remove the need to reduce the existing capital programme or borrow to fund this scheme.

Reason for decision:

To enable the Farnham Road Bridge scheme to take place to ensure the ongoing safety of the travelling public and economic prosperity of Guildford Town Centre.