MORE than £3 million has been provided towards the cost of repainting Halton's landmark Silver Jubilee bridge.

A major road junction in the middle of Widnes town centre has also been given almost £500,000 to improve traffic flow.

The money comes from the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority as part of a package of £25m funding to support 15 highway schemes across all six of the region's districts, including Halton.

The bridge, a grade 2 listed structure, was closed temporarily last October when the tolled Mersey Gateway opened, for major renovation and reconfiguration.

The bridge is being modified for local use and will have just two lanes and designated cycle and pedestrian routes when it reopens as a tolled crossing next year.

The new funding is set to make up the shortfall in another grant for the planned arch steel superstructure painting project.

The Widnes gyratory signal junction which links the town centre to The Hive leisure park and Widnes Waterfront currently has insufficient capacity and is often blocked with a backlog of traffic.

The new scheme will provide an additional right turn lane and aims to improve traffic flow.

Steve Rotheram, Liverpool City Region Metro Mayor, said: “My key priority is to drive economic prosperity for the whole city region and ensuring that we have the right transport infrastructure in place is absolutely vital.

“We have carefully designed our key routes network investment programme to support the economic growth of our region.

“This latest wave of funding will improve the state of our roads and enable better traffic flow on key routes across our city region, bringing benefits for our residents, visitors and businesses.”

This £25 million investment is supported by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority’s Single Investment Fund, funded by capital from central Government’s Local Growth Fund.