Gateshead Flyover report predicted structure could last to 2090, just five years before closure

A Gateshead Council document from 2019 predicted that the flyover had a potential remaining lifespan of 71 years – though it makes clear that it would also require a whopping £94 million worth of repairs over that time period to allow it to remain safe to use.

That report was prepared under an unsuccessful bid for £18 million of Government funding to demolish the structure, arguing that the ongoing cost of inspecting and maintaining the A167 flyover had already become “significant and an ongoing burden” for the local authority.

But the relatively recent expectation that the flyover could theoretically stay in service for several decades has sparked calls for clear answers on what happened in the intervening years, both in the maintenance of the road and what deterioration it has suffered, leading up its sudden closure last month – only five years after the 2019 report was drawn up.

It was shut to traffic in mid-December due to serious structural concerns about one of its concrete pillars, while fears that the flyover could collapse led to all Tyne and Wear Metro services running underneath it being suspended for almost two weeks over Christmas.

The 2019 report, seen by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, said that the raised bypass was “not thought to pose an immediate danger in terms of catastrophic failure”. 

But the council has now repeatedly said over recent weeks that it is “clear that the flyover structure has reached the end of its useful life”.

Coun Ron Beadle, leader of Gateshead’s Liberal Democrat opposition, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “It appears very dubious that the council was predicting a 70-year lifespan as recently as 2019. We need to know what maintenance and inspections were going on then and what has happened subsequently to have some idea why the situation has turned out so differently. I suspect that ministers being asked to fund work now would also be interested in the answer.”

While more works to strengthen two flyover pillars are due later this month in an effort to avoid the Metro system being cut in half again, the council ultimately wants to demolish the flyover and reconfigure the road network around Gateshead town centre. 

North East mayor Kim McGuinness has said she is willing to commit regional funds towards the removal of the flyover, but warned that a wider redevelopment will require Government money to go ahead.

Long-standing hopes of replacing the 1960s-built structure with a tree-lined boulevard have been promoted by the council since 2008, including in the failed 2019 expression of interest to the Government’s Local Highways Maintenance Challenge Fund, but have never been funded.

The 2019 bid document warned the flyover is “an increasing maintenance liability and is a barrier to successful regeneration of central areas of Gateshead”, the removal of which would allow for approximately 1000 apartments and 300 houses to be built.

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It identified several regeneration options, ranging in cost from £13 million to £74 million.

But the preferred scheme deemed the “most achievable in terms of scale, cost and overall impact on traffic” was an £18 million demolition of the flyover and conversion of the Park Lane roundabout into a signalised crossroads.

Gateshead Council has been asked for a comment regarding the 2019 report’s lifespan prediction and what had changed since, but had not provided one at time of publication.