Bristol City Council misses 'definitive' deadline for reopening Chocolate Path because there was 'no-one to paint the fence'

A path along the river in the centre of Bristol that closed nearly six years ago will remain shut for another week - after contractors missed the ‘definitive’ deadline announced by the council last month.

The Chocolate Path on the north side of the New Cut River Avon was supposed to open this morning (Monday, September 4), but there was no-one available to paint the fence, so it will remain closed this week and reopen finally on Friday.

However Cumberland Road, which the Chocolate Path runs alongside, has reopened as planned today - meaning motorists and cyclists will be able to travel unhindered along the road itself. The road reopened at about 11am, during a live Bristol Live broadcast on Facebook.

Read next: Wapping Wharf to throw huge party when Gaol Ferry Bridge finally reopens

Bristol City Council’s transport and roads boss, Cllr Don Alexander, welcomed the reopening of Cumberland Road. “It’s great news that work to stabilise Cumberland Road will enable it to reopen today,” he said. “This has been a major engineering project that has presented us with a number of challenges along the way.

"I know many people are looking forward to using the Chocolate Path again and will be able to do so again on Friday, September 8, when we will also be reopening Gaol Ferry Bridge at 5pm.

“It will be fantastic to have both these popular routes in use again and to see people walking and cycling over them once more. It shows our continued investment in our harbourside infrastructure and our determination to get complex projects done,” he added.

The Chocolate Path and the Harbourside Railway first closed at this spot west of Vauxhall Bridge back in December 2017, when the path started breaking up and there were concerns the embankment was unstable. Plans were drawn up to spend £5 million to fix the embankment, but nothing was actually done during 2018 and 2019, and the entire embankment collapsed into the river in early 2020, taking the path, the railway and half the road with it along an 80-metre section.

It was another few months before a project to rebuild the embankment and reinstate the path, the railway and the road began - by now the project was estimated to cost £11 million - but it has been hit by delays and announcements of completion dates that have been missed. Last year, the council said it would it would be fixed and open by February 2023, but in January the council announced that deadline would be missed, and instead set a deadline for May.

At the end of May, the council announced it would be opened at the end of July, and when July turned to August, a ‘definitive date’ of September 4, was announced.

A council spokesperson described this latest delay - albeit of only five days - as a ‘change in date’. “There are some remaining repairs to be made on the Chocolate Path, although it will reopen from Friday, September 8, with timings to be confirmed next week,” he said. “The change in date is due to a combination of factors including staff shortages to carry out the specialist fencing work and unavoidable delays to painting the railings due to the recent wet weather.

Ian Davies, the contracts manager at Griffiths, the firm doing the work, added: “The reasoning behind the slip is a combination of our own short-term resource availability and our fencing sub-contractors along with the weather of late as they have not been able to carry out the actual painting of the fencing.”

Cumberland Road fully reopen to cars, buses, bikes and e-scooters. Today is also supposed to be the first day of operation of a new ‘bus gate’, which has been installed in the past month further east along the road, just past the turning for the SS Great Britain. That means only buses, taxis, bikes and e-scooters can continue east along the road to Bedminster Bridge - and private vehicle drivers will be fined if they try it.

“The bus gate has been installed to the east of Gas Ferry Road, so cars can travel eastbound on Cumberland Road up to this point, which also means that the SS Great Britain can still be accessed from both directions,” said a council spokesperson. “Any unauthorised vehicle travels that through the bus gate will receive a penalty charge notice. All vehicles will still be able to drive westbound along Cumberland Road.”

The new date for the reopening of the Chocolate Path - the sixth announced by Bristol City Council - coincides with the day announced for the reopening of Gaol Ferry Bridge, further east along the New Cut, which has been closed for repairs for more than a year. That is scheduled to reopen at 5pm on Friday this week, and the businesses in Wapping Wharf are throwing a party to mark the occasion.