Comhairle commits £500,000 for replacement bridge to Great Bernera

It follows last week’s decision to ban vehicles weighing more than 7.5 tonnes from crossing the existing bridge, leaving concerns as to how the delivery of vital goods and local services could be maintained.

But Comhairle officers have confirmed that even with the funding in place, it would take two or three months for a new interim structure to be erected.

During a special meeting of the Comhairle last Friday, Loch a Tuath councillor Calum MacLean said that if he were a resident of Bernera he would be “quite annoyed”.

He said: “On August 10-14 there was an investigation into the bridge and within days that bridge was closed to heavy traffic… and that’s why the question is very pertinent as to how much investigation was going on on that bridge, and how much is presently going on in the other bridges, namely Scalpay bridge, and others like it,and have we got confidence then that these investigations are what they should be? Because certainly we have been caught out with Bernera bridge.”

Cllr MacLean continued: “I do believe that there should be a report back to councillors actually to tell us when these investigations were done, how often they were done, because we are now landed with a bill of £500k.

“If this was done earlier, that could have been alleviated in my book so I do believe that there’s certainly a bit of mismanagement that’s gone on with regard to structures within in our communities.”

The Comhairle’s Director of Assets, Finance and Resources, Robert Emmott, said in response that he could give an assurance “that we have inspected all of our bridges and we know where they are all at” and said that the authority “was not concerned about the safety of any of the other bridges”.

Mr Emmott concluded that such infrastructure would need to be a priority in the future capital expenditure plans with a greater proportion of resources being spent on roads infrastructure.

During the meeting a number of councillors praised the swiftness of the response to the situation last week by council staff.

The Comhairle confirmed this week that it is “working closely” with Bernera Community Council, Bernera Community Association and other local volunteers to collect household bins and take them to the Earshader side of the bridge to be emptied.

The authority said it expected to have a suitable vehicle in service for the next collection on September 8 and a recycling bank relocated on the Earshader side of the bridge.