Andy Burnham has promised to reshape Britain’s economy around greater devolution, local investment and growth “in every postcode.” At the heart of that agenda is a compelling idea: government should identify the barriers holding places back and give them the investment and powers needed to grow. Hammersmith Bridge should be an obvious candidate for action.
For seven years, one of south-west London’s most important transport arteries has been closed to vehicles and emergency services. There is still no funded route to reopen it to all modes of transport, despite the economic consequences being felt across Putney, Barnes, Richmond and beyond.
Cities depend on connectivity. People need to reach jobs, businesses need customers and suppliers, and emergency services need reliable routes. When infrastructure stops functioning as intended, the economic activity that depended upon it does not simply disappear. It becomes slower, more expensive and less productive.
Before its closure, around 22,000 vehicles crossed Hammersmith Bridge every day. Those journeys have not vanished. They have instead been displaced onto other routes through Putney, Barnes, Richmond and Hammersmith, adding congestion, extending journey times and placing greater pressure on surrounding roads.
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The cost of doing nothing
I am not currently a car driver and cycle around Wandsworth. I strongly support walking, cycling and public transport. But hundreds of thousands of Londoners still rely on cars, and Hammersmith Bridge remains a vital road artery. That traffic does not vanish simply because the bridge is closed to it.
There is also no longer any convincing argument that political fragmentation makes the problem intractable. In 2019, Fleur Anderson MP campaigned in Putney on a platform that central government should foot the bill for repairing Hammersmith Bridge. Seven years on, Labour runs every level of government: Hammersmith & Fulham Council, City Hall and No 10. So if Labour wanted to reopen the bridge, they could.
Hammersmith & Fulham Council cannot reasonably absorb the roughly ÂŁ300m cost of reopening the bridge alone. Yet in July, plans for a full repair were scrapped, while the estimated cost of essential works simply to keep it open for pedestrians and cyclists rose to ÂŁ128m.
The consequences of doing nothing extend well beyond motorists. Congestion means slower bus journeys. Longer and less predictable journeys make it harder for businesses to move staff and goods. Traffic displaced onto surrounding roads affects air quality and local communities. More than 70 per cent of local businesses have reported that the closure has affected their staff, suppliers or customers.
Individually these may look like relatively small inefficiencies. Across seven years and millions of journeys, they accumulate into the sort of drag on productivity that a government supposedly obsessed with place-based growth should want to remove.
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London remains Britain’s largest economic engine, generating around 40p of every pound of tax collected by government. Making it more productive is not special pleading for the capital; London’s growth helps finance investment across Britain.
That is also why “Manchesterism” faces an intellectual test. If it means empowering places and investing in productive infrastructure wherever growth is being constrained, it is a serious economic philosophy. If it means investment for some parts of the country while productive infrastructure is neglected because spending money in the capital is politically unfashionable, it risks becoming regional favouritism dressed up as economic strategy.
Growth should not be a zero-sum contest between London and Manchester, or north and south. A bridge that delivers a credible economic return should be repaired wherever it crosses. If place-based growth means anything, it should mean fixing infrastructure that demonstrably connects people, businesses and communities and allows an important part of Britain’s most productive city to function properly.
Reopening Hammersmith Bridge to all modes of transport would be a relatively simple way for Burnham to demonstrate that his growth agenda applies to every part of Britain. After seven years, the question is no longer who is responsible. It is whether the government has the political will to get it done.