I am delighted that Government defence procurement minister Maria Eagle has been able to confirm that £1-million now been allocated to repair the vital Inglis Bridge in Monmouth.

We were all united in stressing to the Ministry of Defence how important this was as part of the local right-of-way network. Your county council, the Monmouth Town Council, local residents and our great Labour MP, Catherine Fookes, have all been pressing for this part of the local infrastructure to be restored.

I rather suspect that the Minister had become weary of hearing about Monmouth’s Inglis Bridge, but I hope that she will join us to celebrate its reopening this summer.

The bridge has been a concern for some time. It is a unique listed structure, built in 1931 by the MoD to access Vauxhall fields across the Monnow, and providing a pedestrian and cycle route across Monmouth, used by schoolchildren and adults alike.

Designed by Sir Charles Inglis, it is the last survivor of a type of bridge which was designed to be assembled in combat conditions. To be fair it was never designed to last nearly a century, or to survive winter flooding.

So, when a structural report revealed that the bridge was unsafe, we had no option but to work alongside the military to allow them to close it temporarily. Now, pressure has yielded results and we shall be continuing to work with others to try to speed up the repairs.

Rights of way are important to us all. We live in an area with a huge network of bridle paths, footpaths and byways, many of which provide traffic-free routes through our towns and villages. Some have existed for centuries.

Within our beautiful county we have sections of the Offa’s Dyke path, the Welsh Coast path, the Beacons Way and the Wye Valley Walk, as well as hundreds of local footpaths and bridleways. We have a Rights of Way team, working with landowners and groups of volunteers to keep more than 1500km of paths open. Stretched out they would reach to North Africa!

Now the Inglis Bridge will be part of that resource again, helping to make Monmouthshire that little bit greener.