DRASTIC safety action which could have seen the main route into a town centre closed and led to frontline council services being cut has been averted after the Government agreed to part-fund urgent repair work.

Darlington Borough Council has been given £5.79m to strengthen the "severely corroded" Stonebridge, replace ageing street lamp columns and modernise lights after the schemes were considered among the country's 31 most pressing road issues.

Other recipients of Challenge Fund grants in the region were Newcastle City Council, which has received £13.4m to improve road capacity and connectivity around Haddricks Mill, and Northumberland County Council, which has been given £5.6m to refurbish 130 masonry arch bridges.

Darlington council officers said unless work was undertaken to bolster the Victorian bridge it would have to be closed, stopping 500 buses using it daily.

The council warned the Department for Transport that unless £798,000 of structural work was carried out it would cost town centre's users £1.45m a year in journey delays.

Councillor David Lyonette, the authority's transport spokesman, said the poor condition of the bridge had come as a shock to the authority.

He said: "If we had not received this money it would have just about destroyed all the work on the ring road. I think we have been very lucky.

"We would have been forced to find the money from somewhere, and that would have included frontline services."

He said more than 11,000 street lanterns would be replaced over three years, while 11,875 lights would be upgraded to more efficient LED technology, in a £6.9m scheme, realising savings of £13.27m in energy and maintenance and 37,551 tonnes of CO2 over 20 years.

A Newcastle City Council report said if it did not receive the funding reactive maintenance costs would escalate.

It stated "complete failure (to gain a grant) would be catastrophic as the effect of diversionary routes would create major congestion in and around the city and directly impact on major employment and trip generator sites in the vicinity –

including the internationally-renowned Freeman)hospital."

North Yorkshire County Council, which bid for £28m for landslip protection works including on the unstable Reeth to Richmond road, which was closed for 12 weeks last year after part of the road collapsed, expressed dismay at missing out on the funding.

The authority's roads boss, Cllr Gareth Dadd, said: “The schemes are at a very early stage of development and it would have been very challenging to deliver them by the 2018 deadline for the funding."