HRE GROUP PRESS RELEASE: Thursday 11th April 2024
A historic railway bridge threatened with infilling by National Highways will be sympathetically repaired after its ownership was transferred to East Sussex County Council.
Church Road Bridge in Barcombe was designed by civil engineer Frederick Banister in the early 1880s as part of a line connecting Lewes and East Grinstead. The route closed in 1958, since which time the adjacent section of dismantled railway has been reclaimed by nature. The structure stands within the village’s conservation area.
Until recently, National Highways (NH), the state-owned roads company, managed the bridge as part of the Department for Transport’s Historical Railways Estate. Cracks had first been recorded in its parapets and wing walls decades ago but, in September 2020, NH told Lewes District Council that the bridge represented “an ongoing and increasing risk to public safety” and would be infilled under emergency permitted development rights as part of a national programme of 115 similar schemes.
The Government stepped into to pause the programme in late-July 2021 due to concerns over conflicts with active travel policies, but National Highways awarded £246K contracts for the Barcombe infilling two weeks later, prompting considerable concern within the community. An open letter to NH’s Executive Director for Operations was signed by 176 residents, asking for the works to be halted.
The company relented just before Christmas 2021, but its engineer then lobbied East Sussex County Council (ESCC), the local highway authority, to reduce the bridge’s 20-tonne weight limit to 7.5 tonnes. Such a move would have increased public risk by forcing agricultural traffic to divert through the middle of Barcombe and was resisted by ESCC as Church Road is only lightly trafficked.
Now it has emerged that ownership of the bridge has been transferred to the County Council, lifting any residual threat of infilling.
Hazel Fell Rayner, who leads the local campaign, said “We are delighted to hear that ownership of Church Road Bridge has transferred to East Sussex County Council. There is also huge relief in the community that the Highways team has emphasised its intent to repair the bridge with minimal changes to its appearance and no change to the weight limit – which is so important to Barcombe’s farmers.
“It does continue to raise local eyebrows that National Highways had, in 2020, effectively declared an ‘emergency’ to try to push through their plan for concrete and aggregate infill – and yet all this time later the bridge has remained standing without further strengthening work. This behaviour from a public body has seemed shocking and underhand.
“Infill would have blocked an important and sensitive wildlife corridor adjacent to ancient woodland, and across the community, hundreds of residents got involved in the campaign to save the bridge. It felt like a David & Goliath battle but we are so pleased to have arrived at this very different outcome, where we look forward to the bridge being repaired sensitively for both community and biodiversity benefit.”
In an email to local campaigners, East Sussex Highways has committed to engage positively with the community over its plans for the bridge, insisting that it is determined to retain both its “historical aesthetics” and the existing 20-tonne weight limit. The ownership transfer comes with funding for future maintenance purposes.
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