Pete Bevington

14 December, 2007

BRIDGES are supposed to bring people together, but Shetland Islands Council seems to have done quite the opposite with their plans to cross Lerwick’s north harbour with tarmac and concrete.

The row with Lerwick Port Authority has done nobody any good. The council has lost well over £1 million already spent on a project that will never see the light of day.

Now it is being asked to cough up more than £5 million in compensation after its failed legal action to stop the port from dredging.

The high profile tiff has rippled out and potentially lost the islands lucrative decommissioning work, which experts have estimated could create 227 jobs in the isles over the next two decades.

The port has had its dredging plans put back by two and a half years. It can no longer afford to carry out all the work it originally intended to “future proof” the harbour.

It’s extraordinary how the whole affair developed, and is spelled out for anyone with the time or concentration to read it, in Lord Reed’s judgment on the SIC petition which stopped the port’s dredging plans in August 2005 - www.bailii.org:80/scot/cases/ScotCS/2007/CSOH_5.html 

In 1997 the council started investigating the possibility of a bridge to replace the Bressay ferry. When the initial study by Halcrow Crouch came out in 1999, the port told them they already planned to dredge the harbour’s north entrance to a depth of 7.5 metres.

They also said they wanted to widen the existing 100 metre channel to 120 metres, which would require a clear 20 metres on each side for any piers to be built to support a bridge – a clearance of 160 metres.

In 2001 the council set up a £15.6 million budget to build the bridge. They wanted to finish the job by 2006 to obtain £4 million from the European Regional Development Fund.

The conflict between the two sides really heated up in 2003. In December that year the council put in a planning application for a bridge with a distance of 134 metres between the central piers of the bridge, with a height clearance of 40 metres.

Inevitably the port objected to the plans as they still required a clearance of at least 160 metres.

Meanwhile the port carried out further studies. It was worried the bridge would inhibit the port’s expansion with ships getting bigger all the time. They had already had to dredge in 1990 and 1998, but average ship sizes had doubled since then and they needed to keep pace, especially to cater for the pelagic trawlers visiting Shetland Catch and possible decommissioning work at Greenhead.

In 2004 positions hardened. The port brought in consultants who recommended a 140 metre wide channel dredged to a depth of 10 metres, with any bridge needing an air draft of at least 50 metres. The council said it could not afford to meet such demands.

In October 2004 Graham Spall, the SIC executive director of infrastructure services, complained to the port about their “lack of co-operation”, saying they had agreed to a 100 metre channel.

The port replied saying they had demanded a 160 metre clearance between piers since 1998 and it was “very likely that the centre span width will have to be increased”.

This was repeated at a meeting on 13 December 2004 at a meeting between LPA chairman Leonard Groat, LPA chief executive Allan Wishart, SIC convener Sandy Cluness and SIC chief executive Morgan Goodlad.

New drawings showing a 140 metre wide channel were presented to the meeting, at which Morgan said the council should have “an open mind” about any extra costs the wider channel might pose to the bridge.

The drawings clearly showed how the bridge’s fifth pier would stand in the centre of the revised channel, and Mr Goodlad agreed to look at repositioning it.

“[It] was agreed that the SIC would look at the repositioning of the pillar [i.e. pier 5] and seek costings for the changes required to the design of the bridge,” a note of the meeting states.

At a meeting on 30 March 2005 between the port and the council, the port stated that they planned to start dredging in June 2005. At the same meeting the council claimed the port had committed itself to the original bridge design. The council said to move the bridge pier would add “several million pounds” to the project’s costs.

The port awarded a contract with Jan De Nul to dredge a 140 metre wide channel due to start on 9 August.

Meanwhile the council was getting jumpy. In a report to councillors dated 14 September 2005, SIC lawyer Jan Riise explained to councillors why the authority had stopped the £6.5 million dredging contract going ahead.

He said the bridge project team had only heard about the revised dredging proposals on 24 June 2005, six months after the meeting with Sandy Cluness and Morgan Goodlad and three months after the port said they planned to start dredging in June.

Considering the dredging plans “fatal” to the bridge, the SIC had to act fast. Graham Spall took advice from the bridge team and lawyers in Lerwick and Edinburgh, approached Morgan and Sandy and they petitioned the Court of Session on 4 and 5 August, winning an interim interdict four days before dredging was due to start.

It took another 15 months for the petition to be ruled on by Lord Reed, who threw out the council’s case saying they had no “legitimate expectation” that the port would not dredge.

He said the port had a statutory duty to protect the harbour’s interests and this included dredging when necessary.

Since the ruling and the election of the port’s former chief executive to the council, a new mood of friendliness between the two sides has been forged, no doubt through gritted teeth. Widespread consultation has begun once again and a tunnel is now considered the more likely option for a fixed link between Lerwick and Bressay.

The port is going ahead with a reduced dredging programme which will be 140 metres wide at the corridor where any fixed link will go, which means the original bridge plans are well and truly in the bin. A tunnel is probably the only option to replace the existing ferries.

The port is paying £12 million for a smaller job than it could have done for £6.5 million in 2005, with the council being asked for £5.25 million plus £117,000 legal costs, negotiated down from £300,000.

Now it’s up to the insurers to decide if they will cover the cost of what Lord Reed described as “failed negotiations”. If not it will come out of the coffers of a council that is trying to save money at every quarter.

Now appears to be the time to really start building bridges, not between Lerwick and Bressay, but between the council, the port and the people of Shetland.

But the question remains why it took the bridge project team until June 2005 to hear about a dredging proposal first mentioned to Morgan Goodlad and Sandy Cluness six months earlier, and again in March 2005 when the port they intended to go ahead. If the information had been passed on and received as it should have been, the council would have not had to seek emergency powers and the whole matter could have been properly discussed by the full council...or could it?