The final money to complete Tyne Bridge work has been secured
The final £6 million needed to complete the restoration of the Tyne Bridge has been secured.
Money to finish the famous bridge’s refurbishment in time to celebrate its centenary in October 2028 will be drawn from a £1.85 billion commitment made by Chancellor Rachel Reeves yesterday, the Local Democracy Reporting Service can reveal.
Ministers have come under mounting pressure for months over a missing tranche of funding that had been promised for the Tyne Bridge maintenance project, a four-year scheme which began in April 2024.
While the Department for Transport (DfT) provided an initial £35.2 million towards the repair works, a further pledge was also made by former Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak to stump up another £6.2 million that would cover the full costs of upgrading the grade II* listed crossing and the Central Motorway.
That extra cash was placed under review by Labour after last summer’s general election and there had been serious worries among Tyneside leaders that it was at risk of being cut.
However, it has now been confirmed that the looming funding gap will be plugged following Ms Reeves’ promise of the “biggest ever investment” in the North’s transport infrastructure.
The Chancellor committed to provide £1.85 billion to the North East Combined Authority through a City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements (CRSTS) allocation covering 2027 to 2032, a chunk of which will be used to extend the Tyne and Wear Metro to Washington.
It is understood that the funding needed for the Tyne Bridge works will be brought forward from that pot ahead of time, given the urgency of the works.
North East mayor Kim McGuinness said: “I raised the need for Tyne Bridge funding with the Chancellor directly and I am very pleased we have got that question sorted out. The record £1.85bn funding for transport we announced for the region this week includes £6.3m that will allow Newcastle City Council to complete the restoration of our iconic bridge, in time for its centenary in 2028.”
Politicians and business leaders from across the North East had united in March this year to call on the Government to hand over the promised funding, warning that a failure to do so would be a “spectacular own goal”.
Labour ministers, including prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, had repeatedly refused over a period of several months to commit to delivering the cash – despite it representing a relatively small amount of money in the context of Whitehall budgets.
The frustration added to anger surrounding the scrapping of plans to dual the A1 in Northumberland and cut £50 million of transport funding for County Durham, with the Government arguing it had inherited £2.9 billion of unfunded transport commitments from the Tories
Local councils had cautioned previously that the Tyne Bridge would not be restored “to the quality we would expect” if the full funding package did not come through.
Newcastle City Council’s Labour leader Karen Kilgour said today that the authority had “campaigned passionately to ensure this iconic structure is restored to its former glory and we very much welcome this funding news”.
Her deputy, Alex Hay, said that city bosses had “lobbied for years to secure this funding and stepped in with the council’s own money to make sure the restoration could start when it needed to”, adding: “This announcement is the result of a huge amount of hard work by everyone involved, and I’m delighted we can now get on with the job and complete the restoration to the highest standard.”
More than 1,200 separate repairs will need to be carried out in what is the Tyne Bridge’s first major maintenance in more than 20 years.
That includes a full repaint to return the rusted crossing to its traditional green, waterproofing and repairs to steel, concrete, stonework and masonry.
More than nine tonnes of pigeon guano, rust and dirt were cleared out from a void underneath the bridge’s eastern footway during the first 12 months of the project.
The first fully restored sections of the bridge are now visible on the Gateshead side of the structure, with engineers now working around its Newcastle tower.
Martin Gannon, leader of Gateshead Council, said: “We’re delighted to secure this vital funding from the North East Mayor for the Tyne Bridge restoration.
“We can see from the steelwork already repaired and painted, that this is going to be a fantastic job when completed, and it’s vitally important that we have the full budget available that we were promised by the previous government.
“The Tyne Bridge is a symbol of not just Tyneside but the whole of the North East so it’s vital we get it back to its iconic best.”