Residents still waiting for play area

The work to widen the bridge's lanes finished in 2001

Residents in a Cornwall town have expressed anger over delays in replacing a play and country walk area which was demolished to make way for the improvements to a bridge.

A £30m scheme to widen and strengthen the Tamar Bridge on the Devon/Cornwall border finished in November 2001.

Local people claim the bridge's owners, the Tamar Bridge and Torpoint Ferry Joint Committee, promised to re-instate the area after the work had been completed.

The joint committee said it was looking into the matter.

The area has become overgrown and blocked with undergrowth since the completion of the bridge strengthening and widening works almost two years ago, and now local people want answers.

The chairman of the Saltash Waterfront Residents' Association, Brian Pedley, said the area has become an embarrassment to the town.

He said: "It's been totally laid waste, it's overgrown with thistles, brambles and nettles.

"Even the bits that you can get through, they've been engineered out of existence by all the earth-moving equipment that they had to use during the project.

"We were told that reinstatement work at this site, if it happens at all, isn't going to take place until 2004 or 2005 at the earliest."

The manager of the Tamar Bridge, David List, declined an interview with the BBC but said the joint committee was looking into the matter.