H&F council takes first formal step towards securing Hammersmith Bridge funding
Story 216: After years of debate, the funding process begins
The Bugle is reporting, Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) council has made a pre-submission to the UK Government’s Structures Fund.
Since the £1 billion fund was announced in June 2025, supporters of restoring vehicles to Hammersmith Bridge have viewed it as the most plausible source of future funding.
Expectations rose further earlier this year when the Roads Minister described the bridge as a “good candidate” for investment.
The full statement from H&F council to the Bugle reads,
We have completed a pre‑submission form for the government’s Structures Fund.
This is a requirement before compiling a full bid submission.
The detailed costs and scope of a bid to the fund will now be worked up with the support of expert technical advisers appointed by DfT and subject to agreement from the Cabinet.
Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050?
How the bids will be assessed
The Structures Fund provides grant funding to support the capital costs of repairing or replacing local highway structures.
The UK government’s guidance on the fund includes not just a blank Word document for pre-submissions - you know you know want to - as well as a ‘user guide to the economic toolkit’
The Fund asks councils or Transport for London to compare two futures: fund the project, or do nothing. Over several decades — typically up to 60 years — the model estimates the difference between those futures.
If no intervention takes place, what diversions follow? Which vehicles are affected, for how long, and at what cost in lost time, fuel, congestion, maintenance, air quality, noise and carbon?
The Treasury converts those impacts into pounds. Time, carbon, noise, reliability and maintenance costs are all assigned a monetary value.
Having translated future costs and benefits into today’s money, officials calculate a benefit-cost ratio. Whitehall estimates the value created over the life of a project and then asks how many pounds of benefit taxpayers receive for every pound invested.
The result is a common currency. Officials can compare repairing, say, a bridge in south west London with a viaduct in Cumbria, a tunnel in Wales or a sea wall in Cornwall, and judge which project delivers the greatest value for public money.
Notes and thoughts
Earlier this year Barnes2050 identified five questions about the Structures Fund, several of which The Bugle addresses. At this stage, the key question is, what project is being proposed by H&F council?
There are three broad options going forward for Hammersmith Bridge:
As you were - Restore Hammersmith Bridge to its pre-2019 role, allowing vehicles to cross in both directions. Estimated cost: more than £250 million
Active travel plus public service vehicles - Retain walking and cycling while allowing lightweight buses and similar services. Possible, the campaigning charity estimated this would cost £10 million (2023 prices).
Active travel only - Continue with the current, 2026, arrangement keeping the Bridge for just walkers, wheelers and cyclists.
H&F council statement, quoted by the Bugle, talks about the ‘detailed costs and scope of a bid’ without explicitly saying the objective is full restoration.
That matters. The Structures Fund is a repair fund, not a policy statement. A bid could theoretically be made in support of any of the three broad futures outlined above.
The most important question, then, is not whether H&F council intends to apply for funding. It is what outcome that funding is intended to deliver.
Even the third option above, keeping the Bridge as it is today, is not cost-free. Further work will be required to maintain the newly restored Bridge. Until now H&F coucil have been unwilling to confirm a cost of this.
Based on experience to date - think Hammersmith Bridge Task Force - we may not know the answers to these questions until later this year, given the process deadlines:
Draft bid submission: Friday, 19 June
Final application deadline: Monday, 3 August
Funding decisions: autumn, this year
Project completion deadline: March 2030
Hammersmith Bridge looms large in how Barnes2050 sees potential futures for the area. It has been the subject of much analysis. You can find a full listings of all the articles here.