7. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Climate Change: Closure of the Menai Bridge

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:37 pm on 25 October 2022.

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Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 5:37, 25 October 2022

Thank you. Well, certainly, on your last point, I'd appreciate the help of all Members to make sure that we're able to communicate these messages with honesty and subtlety to constituents. There has been a somewhat hysterical tone amongst some political parties over the weekend to try to create some point-scoring, which I think is deeply inappropriate and doesn't help people to understand the nature of the problems that we are dealing with. So, I hope we won't see any more of that, and I'd be very happy to engage with all Members who are interested in a full and frank conversation about what's happening and the options as we go through them. This is something where party politics should have no place, in my view.

In terms of the contingency plans, I'm happy to set them out for you by letter, but they are as they already stand: to warn and inform drivers of our advisory restrictions when they are required. As I said, they are required infrequently and, generally, for relatively short periods of time. And, as I said, we are working on a new contingency strategy to look at other options, which I'll keep Members fully updated about.

In terms of when the bridge is likely to reopen without restrictions, well, I think that really does depend on the analysis of the state of the hangers. It's not for me to second guess the results of the engineering report, but in the event that all or many of the hangers need to be replaced, then clearly that's going to be a considerable piece of work. The 7.5 tonne restriction, I'd imagine, wouldn't be able to be lifted until the engineers were convinced that was safe. And given that there is concern about the brittle nature of the hangers, it would seem to me that it's premature to think about lifting restrictions altogether until that full assessment and work is carried out. 

I think I've answered the question about the lack of warning and the state of the bridge. There have been regular inspections, and these are industry standards. This is not something peculiar to the Menai bridge; this is what happens with other similar bridges. It is a higher standard of inspection than normal roads, and as well as being of a greater frequency, the checks taking place within the process are to a much higher and more thorough level, and the checking involved within the different agencies responsible and the companies and, separate to them, independent peer reviews is quite considerable. That's one of the reasons why it has taken so long, since the identification of the first problem in 2019, because this is a very thorough and methodical approach, done at arm's length from each other to make sure that it is robust. So, I think it would be unfair to represent this as a slow response to evidence of concern. I think this has been a thorough and methodical approach, in line with industry standard around the world, and that is the process that has shown us that there are problems that justify closing the bridge, so I think we've acted prudently and responsibly. But as I said in answer to Rhun ap Iorwerth, we will of course be conducting a lessons-learned exercise, to see if any mistakes were made that would have prevented us from getting to this position today. But I'm not aware of any that have come to light so far.