LAWYERS will not be getting rich over vital repairs to the Ludlow town walls.
Work is needed in the vicinity of the St Laurence Churchyard but fears of a legal dispute involving the Church, Ludlow Town Council and Shropshire Council have been removed.
Nearly three years ago people living in Upper Linney had to be evacuated from their homes because of concerns about the condition of the historic walls below the church.
The bill for the work is expected to be around £1 million and so fears of a bitter dispute about where the invoice would land had been a major concern.
Ludlow Town Council will take the lead in the project to fix the problem but the bill will not land with Council Tax payers in the town.
However, whilst there is said to be no immediate risk and the condition of the wall will be continually monitored by Shropshire Council, the work will have to be done to prevent this section of the historic town walls from eventually collapsing.
It has been made clear that neither the Town Council, St Laurence Church nor Shropshire Council would be able to find the money needed and this will have to come from another source.
When the extent of the work and the cost is known it is expected that bids will be prepared in an attempt to attract funding from bodies like English Heritage and the Lottery.
“The Town Council has made it very clear that there is no way that it could find the amount of money that is going to be needed,” said Gina Wilding, Ludlow’s Town Clerk.
“It was agreed that we should all work together and that there was no point in getting lawyers involved.”
The annual precept that Ludlow gets from its Council Tax payers is just over £300,000 and is therefore only a fraction of the anticipated bill for the repair.
Investigations into the state of the walls and what needs to be done will continue and it is not expected that any work would begin before next year.
As the walls date back hundreds of years and the failures are a result of wear and tear it is unlikely that the cost of repairs could be met from insurance.
Ludlow town walls are a listed Ancient Monument and were built between 1233 and 1304. They were part of larger town defences that were completed in 1499.
The original walls were fronted by a ditch that is now largely filled in and still in existence in 1691 when there was a drawbridge at Broadgate.
Maintenance is not a new issue with grants to support this work as early as 1294 and 1309 but there has been little major work carried out. However, the first major problems became clear in 2010 in the vicinity of the Castle Street car park.
More than £1 million has already been spent on repairs and maintenance but ownership of the complete wall is in many different hands and cost of a complete restoration would cost many millions of pounds.
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