URGENT bridge repairs to protect against a repeat of the Great Heck rail disaster are set to go ahead in the New Year.

North Yorkshire County Council says that of the 33 road-over-rail bridges in the county, nearly a third have been identified as needing improvements.

Of those, council chiefs today confirmed that three or four needed some repair work "as a priority".

The county council has looked at all its bridges in the light of the February rail crash which killed ten people.

A Land Rover driven by Lincolnshire man Gary Hart left the M62 and was hit by a York to Kings Cross passenger train, which then hit a freight train travelling north. Ten people were killed. Last week Hart was found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving.

The county council has been working, alongside Railtrack and other authorities, to develop a grading system which assesses repair work on the basis of a points system.

Now, after a meeting in Durham to discuss that risk assessment programme, bosses are finally getting ready to start work - almost ten months after the tragedy.

Maintenance of each bridge will cost £20,000. The council has already put aside £100,000 for the work.

Top priority will be the road bridge at Dalton-on-Tees, which stands right on the East Coast Main Line, on the edge of North Yorkshire. A county council spokesman said: "We are always concerned about rail bridges in North Yorkshire and are looking at ways of improving their safety record."

Brian Jones, client manager in the county council's environmental services department, said the chances of another accident like Great Heck were slim.

But he added that the rail disaster had "concentrated the issue". "We want to tackle the most urgent cases almost immediately," he said.

"We think we need to make a move and want to start the ball rolling, irrespective of what is happening elsewhere.

"We want to get the money together as quickly as possible. There are bridges which are a risk and several we would look to start work on.

"Of those, the bridge at Dalton-on-Tees will be one. There has been another accident there on the fencing.

"We want to say we are playing our role in doing something about this and want to move it forward."

A Railtrack spokeswoman said: "Tuesday's meeting went very well. We are working quite closely with North Yorkshire County Council to develop a risk model to assess bridges.

"That's what we were looking at on Tuesday and following that meeting, we have identified some further developments."

Updated: 10:42 Thursday, December 20, 2001