Plans to build a 90-metre bridge to carry HS2 over the existing West Coast Mainline near Kenilworth have been given the green light by the borough council.

The high speed rail developer's designs for the 'Carol Green Rail Underbridge' have been signed off, meaning HS2 can now start building the structure along the Kenilworth Greenway.

Plans show the bridge will have acoustic barriers on both sides, and will be built on land sandwiched between Truggist Lane and Kenilworth Road - on the outskirts of Balsall Common.

"The bridge structure is a portal frame of precast concrete beams supported on in-situ reinforced concrete abutment walls with an in-situ reinforced concrete wingwall at each end, neither of which are the subject of any specialist textured or patterned finishes," the application said.

Most of the land to be used is currently agricultural. Two maintenance stairways will also be built.

An artist's impression of the new bridge as taken from an existing crossing over the West Coast Mainline (image via planning application)

The bridge - which will sit between the Balsall Common viaduct and Burton Green cutting - will take the HS2 line of Network Rail's Rugby to Birmingham section of the West Coast Mainline. 

Trees and hedges may be planted along the embankment near the bridge, but a second application for this will need to be put forward to Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council.

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The High Speed Rail Act 2017 decrees the bridge will happen at some point, but approval for certain design and construction matters still had to be given by the local authority.

See the full plans here.