New ferry landing deal signed after years of delay
NexusA £24m deal to build a new ferry landing has been signed, after years of setbacks and delays to the long-awaited development.
Shields Ferry operator Nexus warned in 2023 that the current north jetty was deteriorating and would become unsafe to use, threatening the future of the link between North and South Shields across the River Tyne.
A contract to design and construct a new landing for passengers to get on and off the vessel at the North Shields Fish Quay has now been awarded to Belfast firm McLaughlin & Harvey.
The publicly-funded landing is being paid for by Nexus and the North East mayor and is expected to open in 2027, with preparatory works already beginning on the riverside.
Nexus appointed the construction and civil engineering firm on a contract valued at £23.9m after a "detailed tendering process", it said.
Planning efforts had suffered multiple setbacks as the estimated cost of the project escalated due to inflation hitting the construction industry.
Spiralling costs
In 2020, the estimated price of a new landing to replace the deteriorating one at Smith's Dock was £8.8m.
But Nexus lost a £5.6m grant it had received from the government's Getting Building Fund because it could not meet a strict requirement to complete construction by spring 2022, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.
The project was later included in a Levelling Up Fund bid by North Tyneside Council for a wider regeneration of North Shields, but the application was unsuccessful.
Amid rising costs blamed on the "very complex" nature of the building project, Labour mayor Kim McGuinness signed off almost £6m of extra funding for the work last summer.
This was on top of previous allocations of £8.2m from the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements programme and £4.58m from the Transforming Cities Fund.
