Is there a solution for Hull's creaking infrastructure?

Soaring costs of bridge repairs are causing headaches

As Nazi Germany’s military leaders weighed up the option of invading Britain in the summer of 1940, staff in Hull’s city engineers office were busy making preparations of their own.

They were planning what defensive action could be taken in the event of German troops landing on the beaches on East Yorkshire before moving west towards the city and its strategically important port.

Among the projects approved for implementation should the need arise was a simple one - every bridge spanning the River Hull which runs through the middle of the city would be fixed in the open position making it impossible for vehicles to cross. Detailed proposals were drawn up to remove the gearing mechanism at each lifting and swing bridge along the river and to bury the relevant parts at a secret location in the countryside.

As well as slowing any enemy advance, it was also thought that disabling the bridges would also create longer-term congestion problems during any potential German occupation. Because the riverbanks in the city were occupied by mills and warehouses, the thinking was that any temporary crossings installed by the Germans would have to be at the locations of the existing bridges, making things even more complicated for them.

Such was the secrecy surrounding the plan that any driver ultimately given the job of ferrying the mechanical parts to their new rural home would not have known about his destination until the very last minute via sealed orders detailing the mission which were only to be opened once sat in the driving seat.

Over 80 years later, the bridges over the River Hull and, in particular, their mechanical workings, are once again the focus of attention. This time it’s not a potential invasion causing headaches but their crumbling condition and an apparent lack of funding to maintain them properly.

Drypool Bridge is expected to close to road traffic for six months from April

Last year Drypool Bridge was subject to an emergency closure when a number of corroded concrete support columns were spotted during an inspection. Fortunately, the bridge was able to re-open 16 days later after safety checks but a full repair scheduled to start in April will require a six-month closure to all road traffic.

The initial closure was triggered by a six-monthly inspection which found several of the supporting columns directly below the bridge deck had suffered unusually rapid deterioration since they were last checked. The cause of this quickfire corrosion has yet to be properly explained but the consensus appears to suggest a combination of ageing concrete (the bridge opened in 1961) and the marine environment in which the structure sits.

The latter includes the rising levels of silt. River traffic has steadily declined over the last couple of decades almost to the point where seeing an actual boat heading up or downstream is something of a novelty. A corresponding reduction in regular dredging creates ever higher mudbanks which are exposed at high tide. The inspection at Drypool Bridge found part of the structure now buried permanently in silt whereas before it wasn’t. The same issue, together with its original design, eventually forced the closure of Scott Street bridge further up the river.

More recently, a number of broken bearings were discovered on the Scale Lane pedestrian bridge. Without any immediate scheduled marine traffic on the River Hull, a decision was taken to temporarily keep the bridge open for pedestrians and cyclists until further checks could be made.

Now those checks have been completed and with a number of vessel movements expected in the immediate future the bridge has been closed as a crossing with repairs expected to be carried out early this year.

Scale Lane bridge

Meanwhile, there’s no immediate sign of anything happening soon at Chapman Street bridge. The historic bridge has been closed to road traffic since 2020 and councillors were recently told it could take another three years before it reopens. The elongated timescale was attributed to delays in the planning consent process owing to its status as a Grade II listed structure.

Opened in 1874, it’s the oldest surviving working bridge on the river. When it’s working it provides handy access to and from the city’s industrial heartland along Bankside in much the same way that Scott Street bridge did before its closure and eventual removal.

All three underline the mechanical challenges of maintaining heavily-used moving bridges but they also highlight how increasingly financially difficult it has become for cash-strapped local councils to do anything about such vital infrastructure assets when things inevitably go wrong.

The estimated cost of the Chapman Street scheme is currently around £7m. To put that into context, whoever ends up as the first elected mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire with devolved spending powers on transport will have just over £13m a year to spend on local projects.

Not much happening at Chapman Street bridge

The cost of the required repairs to Drypool Bridge are also estimated to be at least £8m. It had been hoped some government money previously allocated to HS2 could be secured towards the work at Drypool but there was no mention of it in Rachel Reeves’ recent budget. Without any HS2 cash, the council is having to fund the urgent repair contract awarded earlier this week to ESH Construction from its own capital programme using money originally earmarked for other bridge-related projects.

Whether that involves the long-awaited re-appearance of Banksy’s Draw The Raised Bridge remains to be seen. The artwork first appeared on the permanently raised deck of the old Scott Street bridge in early 2018 before being removed for safety reasons in late 2019. Six years after it first caused a flurry of excitement and attracted hundreds of curious visitors to the bridge, we still await its promised return to the public spotlight at a venue yet to be officially confirmed as the bridge itself is no more. The last I heard (nearly two years ago) it was supposed to be going into the indoor Trinity Market in the city centre.

Would any other major city tolerate such a delay? As with our crumbing bridges, Hull seems to specialise in a collective shrug of the shoulders over such drawn-out sagas.

What’s left of Scott Street bridge

At least the East Yorkshire branch of the Inland Waterways Associations kicked up a bit of a fuss last year when an engineering fault on Ennerdale Bridge meant it could not open to larger river traffic for six months. As the bridge is part of the designated route for abnormal loads during any diversion as a result of the ongoing and recently extended A63 works, arranging a three-night closure to allow for the repair works to take place was tricky and didn’t finally happen until September.

As for building a completely new modern bridge over the river to create better and much-needed inner-city transport connectivity, I’m told it would cost between £60m and £80m depending on the value of the land required for such a project. Given the fragile state of the current moving ones, a fixed bridge would seem the best solution. Given the timescales of current public works in Hull, it could take decades for anything like that to materialise.

Which brings me to a wider point about cities like Hull (as well as smaller towns) being no longer in charge of their own destiny when it comes to the stewardship of much of the public infrastructure created by their predecessors.

Through a combination of factors - austerity cutbacks, Brexit, Covid, inflation and a stuttering global supply chain - the results can be seen every day in pot-holed roads, creaking bridges and endless burst water mains.

Being agile enough to take advantage of one-off government beauty contests like Levelling Up will only get councils so far and, in reality, only serve to paper over the cracks.

Reeves has already hinted the new Labour government is looking at rebooting the Blair era’s PFI programme which locally transformed Hull’s secondary school estate. A similar public-private sector initiative to take a radical long-term look at the city’s bridges wouldn’t go amiss in this neck of the woods.