A BILL to scrap tolls on the Tay Road Bridge is likely to go before the Scottish Parliament in September or October, the first meeting of the new joint bridge board was told yesterday.

Bridge officials met the Scottish Executive last week and were told that legislation to abolish tolls would be pushed through as quickly as possible.

Board treasurer David Dorward said the point was made by the Tay bridge team that a lot of “groundwork” remained to be done before tolls disappeared, but the Executive said it was well aware of the situation.

A bill reference group—comprising members of the Executive’s transport directorate and Dundee City Council and the joint board officials—will be established to progress matters towards the abolition of tolls.

This body will meet every two to three weeks.

However, Executive officials want to meet the board’s re-appointed chairman John Letford and his new vice-chairman Andrew Arbuckle as soon as possible, and are proposing that this should take place next week.

The Executive has also said it would like the board to remain in charge of decision making on bridge matters.

Mr Dorward said that the Forth Estuary Transport Authority had already sorted out a redundancy package for tolls staff who will lose their jobs and it was “imperative” that the Tay bridge board dealt with issues surrounding its own staff as quickly as possible.

Mr Letford, who defeated Mr Arbuckle by six votes to four in a contest between the two for the chairmanship of the board, said it was not their stance to negotiate redundancy for Tay bridge staff.

Rather, he said efforts would concentrate on redeployment elsewhere and retraining. Mr Letford said if neither of those was possible, then the priority would have to be securing the best severance deal for affected staff.

Transport and General union representative Colin Coupar had been due to lead a delegation of union members at the board meeting, but Mr Letford said Mr Coupar had declared himself “quite happy” with the efforts that are being made on behalf of bridge staff.

A meeting will take place “as quickly as possible” between the board and union representatives, Mr Letford said.

At present, the bridge has 47 staff, 25 of whom are involved in toll collection. Some of those are likely to be nearing retiral age or keen to accept voluntary severance deals, but it is likely the majority will face redundancy unless jobs can be found for them.