Jackson £20m Exceat Bridge upgrade: design, traffic and ecology notes for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Jackson Civil Engineering has secured a £20m contract from East Sussex County Council to replace the single-lane, 1870s Exceat Bridge on the A259 over the River Cuckmere in the South Downs National Park. The scheme, funded by £7.9m from the Levelling Up Fund, £11.28m from Bus Service Improvement Plan Round 1 and council capital, will remove a major traffic pinchpoint between Seaford and Eastbourne where queues currently form in both directions. Preparatory works are due to start in spring, with environmental sensitivity a key requirement given the Seven Sisters Country Park setting.
Technical Brief
- Contract scope includes full replacement of a Victorian-era bridge originally built circa 1870 for horse-drawn traffic.
- Existing structure underwent extensive repairs in the 1970s, indicating ageing substructure and fatigue-prone elements.
- Single-lane configuration with eastbound priority has required temporary traffic lights to regulate two-way flows.
- Location within Seven Sisters Country Park and South Downs National Park imposes strict environmental and visual constraints on construction methods.
- East Sussex County Council identifies the A259 corridor as critical for coastal economic connectivity between Eastbourne and Brighton.
- Funding stack combines £7.9m Levelling Up allocation with £11.28m Bus Service Improvement Plan Round 1 support plus council capital.
- Preparatory works are scheduled to commence in spring, implying near-term mobilisation, traffic management setup and site compound establishment.
Our Take
Within our 701-piece Infrastructure corpus, relatively few projects sit inside protected landscapes like the South Downs National Park, so the Exceat Bridge scheme is likely to face tighter design and environmental scrutiny than typical A-road upgrades.
The combined use of Levelling Up funding and Bus Service Improvement Plan money signals that East Sussex County Council is framing the Exceat Bridge replacement as both a resilience scheme and a public-transport corridor enhancement between Seaford, Eastbourne and Brighton, which can strengthen its case for future central-government support.
For Jackson Civil Engineering Group, a £20m bridge in a constrained site over the River Cuckmere adds to a portfolio of medium-scale UK structures work in our database, positioning the firm as a go-to contractor for complex, environmentally sensitive crossings rather than just volume highway works.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
