Major investigations are under way to decide the size of the replacement for a collapsed Shropshire bridge – to ensure it is high enough to cope with massive floods and climate change.

A temporary bridge is in place at Sheinton, near Cressage, after it gave way following heavy flooding last year.

Shropshire County Council has already held talks over the replacement of Sheinton Bridge with English Heritage as it is listed.

Now it has begun two months of work on flood calculations to ensure it will be high and wide enough to be approved by the Environment Agency.

John Williams, Shropshire County Council’s bridges team leader, said: “We are currently carrying out flood calculations.

“Whenever you build a bridge or carry out substantial modifications to an existing bridge you need the formal consent of the Environment Agency.

“For a new bridge design they will stipulate that the bridge has to be designed to take a flood event that is expected to happen once in every 100 years and an extra 20 per cent of water on top of that. That is to allow for global warming.”

He said the bridge also had to be high enough to allow “600mm of fresh air” between the theoretical flooding level and the underside of the bridge.

Mr Williams said the calculations being carried out for the bridge would allow the authority to know how high and wide the new structure would need to be.

Work on building the new bridge, which is expected to cost about £250,000, is not due to take place until 2010.