£4.5m Linton Bridge repair works set to be approved

Repair work costing four and a half million pounds could begin next month on the flood-damaged Linton Bridge near Wetherby.

Councillors are being asked to approve plans to repair the link between Linton and Collingham which was damaged in the Boxing Day floods.

At the meeting at Civic Hall on Wednesday 22 June, the council’s executive board will be asked to formally approve plans to spend up to £4.5million on repairing the bridge, which has been closed since suffering significant damage in the Boxing Day floods.

The bridge over the River Wharfe, which carries traffic between Linton and Collingham, suffered damage to the foundations, rendering it unsafe.

Emergency work was undertaken before Easter to fill the voids beneath the sunken pier using special underwater concrete. In order to access the bridge, a temporary road had to be built in the nearby field.

Whilst the filling of these voids will protect the pier foundation from further erosion and settlement, the cracked arch remains at risk of collapse. It is the precarious state of this arch which has made it impossible for engineers to work on or beneath it until such time as it is securely supported.

Design teams are now working on the complex challenge of repairing the bridge whilst maintaining as much of the original material and its appearance as possible. A solution has now been identified with work expected to start by the end of July to put in place a river platform, pre-fabricated arch support units and the construction of the foundations of the temporary support structure in the river.

The permanent repair works are expected to be completed by the summer of 2017.