COUNCILLORS have urged Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council’s Cabinet to ensure that a footbridge at Bramley railway station will be accessible to disabled users if it gets the go-ahead.

As previously reported by The Gazette, the borough council’s Cabinet gave the green light to ring-fencing £450,000 for a new railway footbridge in Bramley despite opposition from Bramley Parish Council.

Bramley ward member and deputy council leader Councillor Ranil Jayawardena applied for the cash from the Local Infrastructure Fund (LIF) in a partnership with Hampshire County Council and Network Rail.

However, in a report to the borough council’s scrutiny committee, a feasibility study carried out for the scheme in 2010 said that a bridge with a ramp to allow access for disabled users and mothers with pushchairs would have a “significant visual impact” and land may need to be purchased from Network Rail.

Cllr Malcolm Bell, vice-chairman of Bramley Parish Council, spoke at the meeting to raise concerns from the parish council and residents about the application.

The parish council submitted an LIF application for traffic-calming measures in the village, and was told by the Cabinet that their proposal would be considered at the same time as the footbridge proposal.

Cllr Bell told the meeting: “The greatest number of comments were concerned with the sparse village facilities, infrastructure, traffic, parking, and over congestion. The footbridge was not the main concern.”

Bramley borough councillor Cllr Chris Tomblin told the meeting that a footbridge is not the most “urgent requirement”, adding: “They (the parish council) see that the number one priority is currently safety management of routes to school combined with the better solution of how footways from the new developments interact with the busy traffic around the east side of the crossing.”

Cllr Sean Keating, Labour councillor for South Ham, said the footbridge application “didn’t reflect the residents of Bramley” whilst Labour deputy leader Cllr Paul Harvey labelled Cllr Jayawardena’s LIF application as “flawed”.

Labour councillor Colin Regan said: “Just thinking of the people in wheelchairs and scooters, when they come to the bridge and it is not accessible and made out of public money, what are they to think – ‘nobody cares about us?’.”

But Conservative borough council leader Cllr Clive Sanders defended the decision to ring-fence the cash, saying more information would be gathered about the viability of the scheme before a final decision is made.

He said: “If you look at the decision, it doesn’t allocate money. It is ring-fencing funds so if a decision is made to build a bridge, they would be available. But it is not making a decision to do it.”

The committee will recommend to Cabinet that the bridge should be made accessible for disabled people if the plan goes ahead, and that borough councillors should consult parish councils before submitting future applications.