Taxpayers will not foot bill of Great Yarmouth bridge repairs

Contractual obligations on the builder mean repairs on the new River Yare crossing will not be funded from the public purse

The cost of repairing a new bridge that has been closed indefinitely will not be footed by taxpayers.

Norfolk County Council said ongoing work to fix Great Yarmouth's Herring Bridge would continue this week.

The £121m bridge got stuck twice on Wednesday, causing delays for road and river users, and was shut indefinitely the next day for investigations.

The council said the cost of the investigation and any repairs would fall on its contractor, Bam Farrans.

Graham Plant, the council's cabinet member for transport and infrastructure, said it was embarrassing that the bridge had been forced to close just six weeks after its official opening ceremony on 1 February.

"It is embarrassing that it is happening, but it is happening at a time when the operators have the right in the first year to put their snaggings and their problems right again," he said.

"It was part of the contract that they operate it for a year to get rid of all these snags, and that's all part of a new bridge-build.

"What we want is anything like this [to be] sorted out in the first year so that the ratepayer is not expected to pay for it."

Graham Plant said the bridge contract was designed to ensure that any "snagging" issues were the responsibility of construction company Bam Farrans

Since the bridge was closed last week for investigations, it has been raised and lowered several times. However, no details about the problem have been released officially.

Mr Plant said everything had to interlock properly and "everything has to be signed off as it goes up; as it comes down".

"[Each span is] a 750-tonne piece of kit. You don't want it going wrong when it's in a fragile or dangerous position, so from that point of view there are many safety features built in," he said.

"The safety features are saying that either the bridge isn't open [or] the bridge isn't closed properly, and the sensors that are sending that [information] to the computer are being looked at at the moment by the specialist engineers."