AS £100,000 is spent this week maintaining Poole’s old lifting bridge, plans are afoot for a £4million expenditure in two years time.

The latter is part of £66m government funding won by the Dorset Local Enterprise Partnership to improve the county’s infrastructure.

It will be used to rebuild the 87-year-old bridge’s deteriorating approach spans and will mean a closure likely to run into months during 2016.

“It’s going to be a long closure,” said John Rice, Borough of Poole engineering manager. “It’s a big piece of work.”

The blue beams above the water, concrete decking, footways and road needs replacing both sides of the bridge. “The concrete sections are deteriorating quite badly,” he said.

“We have done a number of repairs over the years. It is reaching a point where, if we are not careful, there are more repairs than concrete.”

He said it was not in a dangerous condition but the work needed to be done and they would be sitting down and working out how long the major rebuild might take.

Poole Bridge’s week long closure for annual maintenance is seeing engineers, electricians, divers, painters, copper workers, software specialists and others set about 27 different pieces of work.

These range from minor tasks like changing light bulbs – easy when the bridge is closed to traffic but impossible to access when it isn’t – to digging dead birds from the tracks, to under-water work to secure pipes carrying cables dislodged during winter storms.

Around half of the budget, £50,000 is being spent on replacing four of the bridge’s 10 CCTV cameras with top of the range models. “We have 10 cameras on each bridge and all of the vital areas are visible from more than one camera,” he said.

One of the challenges has been to find craftsmen who work with copper, with which the bridge towers are clad.

“There are a lot of lead workers around. It is challenging finding copper workers.” However a company based in Cardiff is carrying out the task.

Mr Rice, pictured right, said the work was progressing well.

“There is nothing at this stage to suggest it won’t be open on schedule on Monday morning,” he added.