A SENIOR council director says Worcester's Carrington Bridge is "shovel ready" for dualling - as long as the Government can cough up the cash.

In recent months Worcestershire County Council has undertaken serious lobbying over trying to secure the £70 million needed to dual the route.

In the autumn a detailed business case was drawn up spelling out the benefits of enlarging the congestion A4440 bridge.

John Hobbs, a County Hall director overseeing business, the environment and the economy, says the authority will be ready and waiting for the money to come in.

He says the current £41 million dualling of the rest of the Southern Link Road shows Whitehall that the county is serious about finishing the job.

He also says extra money from Whitehall does pop up at "odd times of the year", suggesting the schemes which stand the best chance of success are those ready to go immediately.

"Firstly, you've got to have good projects in place and secondly, you've got to deliver them," he said.

"But it's what I call 'fill the pipeline' - the third most important thing is that you've got to know what you're doing next.

"In recent years a lot of projects have got the go-ahead because they are what I call 'shovel ready'.

"They've been ready to go and we've ended up doing them because money does pop up (from central Government) at odd times of the year."

In October the leader Councillor Adrian Hardman wrote to Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin to remind him of the desperate need to enlarge the A4440 bridge.

Councillor Hardman wants work on the bridge to be able to start seamlessly once the rest of the link road is finished.

The note to Mr McLoughlin was put together alongside Worcestershire's Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and called the bridge dualling "the final and most crucial stage" towards easing congestion in south Worcester.

The structure handles 30,000 vehicles a day and at the moment the work on the rest of the A4440, which will run into 2018/19, will end without making any changes to it due to the high costs.

In recent months all of south Worcestershire's MPs have been lobbying the Government fiercely on it, and Mr McLoughlin visited the bridge himself in April to look at it just before the General Election.