Southern Country Park – Temporary closure of a footbridge over the Spel Brook (Thorley Bridleway 027) – Good news and bad news.

We recently reported that the footbridge over the Spel Brook in the Southern Country Park had been closed since May 2023 – almost 18 months!

The good news is that this morning workmen contracted by the County Council were on site removing the old damaged footbridge. The bad news is that there’s currently no timeline for when a replacement footbridge will be installed.

The latest update from the Project Officer at the County’s Countryside & Rights of Way (CRM) team is detailed below.

“In terms of the replacement bridge this will be built as quickly as possible however we will need to obtain an exemption or permit from the Environment Agency (dependant on the size of the bridge) and quotations. Due to the protracted of the process to receive permits to remove the bridge any costs we would have had at the start of the process will now have expired and also we have been working to refine the specification of the bridges we install and would like to use the current specification here.”

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