Developers will need to find another £6 million towards a new bridge in the Royal Docks after Newham Council cut its funding by almost half.
The twisty bridge would link the Excel centre and Custom House station with the major new development at Silvertown Quays across Royal Victoria Dock, which includes the transformation of the landmark Millennium Mills building.
The Silvertown Partnership, which is behind the development, wants to build the £43 million crossing, which would sit next to the existing high-level bridge that crosses the dock. That bridge opened in 1998 but has been plagued by lift failures.
In June last year, Newham’s cabinet agreed to pay £13.2m towards the cost of the bridge, which was given planning approval in 2023. But this money would have come from a loan that would cost the council £1 million a year over a 50-year period.
Councillors on the borough’s overview and scrutiny committee challenged the decision. They said the cabinet should have had more information on the economic benefits of the bridge and that the loan did not offer value for money. They also said it was unfair that so much money was being committed to a project that would only benefit one area of the borough.
The committee chair, Labour councillor Lester Hudson, said: “Newham Council has got a serious fiscal hole in its budget.
“Regeneration is not just about bricks and mortar – there has to be some kind of contribution for the residents.”
A report commissioned by council officers following the challenge said the main benefits of the bridge would be through “journey time savings” of £7.4 million.
At a meeting on Wednesday the cabinet decided not to borrow £13.2 million for the bridge.
Instead, the council will contribute £6.9 million. Rather than a loan, this will come from money paid to the council by developers of the nearby Royal Wharf development, which faces the Charlton riverside, to fund local infrastructure.
The reduced contribution means The Silvertown Partnership will need to find further investment elsewhere. Newham said it would not pay the £6.9 million until the partnership had found this funding.
Newham’s elected mayor, Rokhsana Fiaz, said capital spending was “a normal function of pretty much every single public body and every single local authority in this country”. But she acknowledged that the council was “in a serious financial situation”.
She said: “I think it is important we do maintain investments in the Royal Docks and different parts of our borough because capital investment helps promote growth, it helps draw inward investment and in this instance it’s right that we’ve been able to identify other sources of funding to avoid borrowing more.”
Nick Clark is the local democracy reporter for Newham, based at Social Spider CIC. The Greenwich Wire is a partner in the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which is a BBC-funded initiative to ensure councils are covered properly in local media. Additional reporting by Darryl Chamberlain.
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