Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what discussions his Department has had with representatives of the (a) London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham and (b) Port of London Authority on legal responsibility for the closure of the River Thames at Hammersmith Bridge.

As asset owners, London Borough Hammersmith and Fulham (LBHF) are responsible for the closure of Hammersmith Bridge. In August 2020, LBHF instructed the Port of London Authority (PLA) to close the river under the bridge.

LBHF and PLA are both members of the Government-led Hammersmith Bridge Taskforce. Within this forum, discussion on the closure of Hammersmith Bridge is ongoing. To date, the Taskforce has met 14 times. Our continued leadership through the Taskforce has meant that the Case for Continued Safe Operation Board accepted PLA’s proposal to allow limited and controlled river transits when there are no workers on the bridge; this is only for vessels which cannot carry out their activity elsewhere on the river.

Discussions continue at officials’ level between the Department, LBHF and the PLA. DfT engineers have also extensively engaged with their counterparts at LBHF to offer support in evaluating the condition of the bridge