Hansard

I congratulate my friend and colleague for bringing this important issue to the chamber.

Bridges in rural Scotland are far more than physical structures—they are lifelines connecting families to healthcare, pupils to their schools, local businesses to their customers and emergency services to the people who rely on them. When one of those crossings fails, the consequences are immediate, far reaching and often severe.

Tim Eagle spoke about the Spey viaduct, demonstrating, in the clearest possible terms, that even historic structures that we assume to be permanent are increasingly vulnerable. However, the Spey viaduct is not an isolated case. Across Scotland, councils are being forced into making impossible choices. Highland Council has already acknowledged that some bridges will now be entering “managed decline”.

Across the UK, the RAC Foundation continues to identify thousands of council-managed bridges that are rated as “substandard”, which are restricted, weight limited or awaiting essential repairs that local authorities simply cannot afford to fund in the near term.

That is the national context into which the people of Kirkcudbright were thrust last year. I am speaking about the A755 Kirkcudbright bridge—not the other, famous, Telford bridge at Tongland. The Kirkcudbright bridge is a key crossing on which the town relies every single day.

On 21 March 2025, Dumfries and Galloway Council took the difficult, but necessary, decision to close the bridge to all vehicle traffic. Engineers had confirmed that it no longer met minimum loading requirements. Pedestrians and cyclists could still cross, but the vital road link—the practical everyday connection—was severed, and a five-mile detour was put in place.

By July, following further assessment with engineers, the bridge was reopened, but under severe restrictions. Those measures, while inconvenient, are a solution to avoid total closure—they are a clear engineering judgment that the structure is at the end of its working life. However, automatic number plate recognition and closed-circuit television enforcement had to be deployed because non-compliance posed a real risk. I hear that far too many people are still breaking the rules and are not being prosecuted.

Throughout that period, the community and businesses of Kirkcudbright showed remarkable patience and resilience. They adapted to the diversions, delays and uncertainty, and they lived with very real questions about what would happen if the bridge’s condition deteriorated further, in particular regarding emergency access.

To its credit, the council recognised the scale of the challenge, and it has designated a replacement for the A755 Kirkcudbright bridge as a strategic priority. An initial budget allocation was approved last April, and approximately £100,000 is now being used to develop the outline business case. However, a full replacement bridge is a multiyear, multistage undertaking. It requires design progression, statutory processes, environmental and land surveys, procurement and—crucially—construction funding that no single authority can, or should be expected to, shoulder alone.

There has been much debate about Scottish Government intervention and project-specific funding. I called on the First Minister for support when the bridge first closed. I will not repeat the arguments that I made then, but the central point is that, if a bridge is essential to local and regional connectivity, as Kirkcudbright’s bridge unquestionably is, Scotland needs a practical co-funding mechanism that will allow such projects to move quickly and keep towns connected. I cannot overstate the impact on the local economy, including businesses from cafes and hotels to trades and tourist businesses.

Kirkcudbright is far from the only example, and the issues are not confined to road bridges. We will hear later, in a contribution from Craig Hoy, about footbridges in Annan. Such examples underline that rural Scotland is once more being asked to absorb infrastructure losses that it cannot afford to shoulder. I am therefore calling for future Governments to consider the creation of a multiyear, ring-fenced national bridge programme, jointly funded with local authorities. Priorities should be transparent and based on lifeline criteria such as healthcare access, education, emergency response, freight and tourism. We need accelerated replacement for structures where capacity is already structurally exhausted, as in Kirkcudbright. That means funding early-stage design, surveys and statutory work so that communities are not left waiting for years before construction can begin.

As a safeguarding exercise, we need strengthened weight limit compliance. Automatic number plate recognition enforcement has proven somewhat effective in Kirkcudbright, but more needs to be done. Rolling out similar systems nationwide will help to protect vulnerable bridges and extend their lifespan.

Our weather patterns are changing, and we need increased investment in climate resilience, particularly scour monitoring and river bed surveys, to reduce the risk of sudden failures.

The Scottish Government needs to recognise that councils are facing bridge backlogs measured in tens and hundreds of millions of pounds. We need long-term, predictable funding, not short-term pots that disappear before projects can advance.

The motion is about safeguarding connectivity, the rural economy and public confidence. Bridges hold communities together. When they fail, communities fail. Kirkcudbright bridge serves as a warning, but such situations are also opportunities—to modernise Scotland’s local infrastructure and to protect rural communities that rely on such crossings every day.