The Floating Harbour is an historic and integral part of the city, supporting a diverse range of businesses, homes and livelihoods as well as wildlife. It is an important part of Bristol’s tourism offer too.
When we meet in February, cabinet will consider a report that calls for urgent action to invest almost £12 million to stabilise key river walls along the New Cut of the River Avon over the next five years.
This is another example of our work investing in Bristol’s future, restoring the crumbling infrastructure that this administration inherited. It is on top of our rolling £16 million programme to restore six key New Cut bridges and an investment of around £3 million into the sluice infrastructure, which protects the harbourside and surrounding areas from flooding, by controlling water levels within the harbour.
These are difficult decisions to make, as in the short-term construction works cause disruption to residents’ lives and are therefore understandably not popular. Our administration will continue to choose the sustainability of Bristol’s key infrastructure over short-term political gain.
A harbour condition survey carried out in 2019 and 2020 identified 194 retaining river wall assets along the Floating Harbour and New Cut. Of these, 58 were found to be in a critical or serious structural condition with 11 considered to be high risk.
The risk is clear: failure of just 11 of these assets could lead to severe consequences, including loss of life, flooding, property damage, and major disruption to traffic across the city. Now is the time to start work on stabilisation measures to mitigate this risk and secure its long-term future for all the communities it supports.
The cabinet report for Tuesday 6 February will set out the preferred option to address the issues, which includes prioritising four river wall structures – one next to Langton Street Bridge, two next to Gaol Ferry Bridge and one near Bedminster Bridge. These river walls along Cumberland Road and Coronation Road, which are at significant risk, would undergo detailed design work and repairs.
The report recommends further investigation, ecological assessments, vegetation clearance and scoping out what the repairs would involve at four more river wall sites, including next to Paynes Shipyard, Camden Road, Gaol Ferry ramp and Feeder Road jetty.
The preferred option also includes proposals to repair Underfall Sluice footbridge, a critical element necessary for our flood defences. This is a footbridge along the Chocolate Path, which would be closed throughout the works with a diversion put in place via the Harbour Railway.
Taking these proposals forward would mean an investment of £11.9 million, which would address our most pressing concerns. We proudly continue to invest in Bristol’s infrastructure. Although a huge funding commitment, if a river wall were to fail, it would cost much more to repair it and cause major disruption.
Stabilising our river wall assets is vital for the long-term safety and resilience of Bristol’s iconic waterfront infrastructure as well as our transport network.
