TRAVELLERS looking forward to crossing Scotland’s newest bridge should switch their engines off – there’s a long wait ahead.

Traffic was originally supposed to start flowing over the £1.35 billion Queensferry Crossing in December, but bad weather saw that date pushed back to late May.

Now Economy Secretary Keith Brown has revealed another hold-up after high winds disrupted work, delaying the opening until sometime in late summer. Speaking to MSPs at Holyrood, Brown called the over-run “a huge disappointment” and said 1500 people are now working the round the clock to prevent any further delays.

Staff are being kept on standby to make sure no weather window is missed. However, when pressed to guarantee the revised date, Brown said: “Weather is the master.”

He told a Holyrood committee he had learned of the issue on Monday, adding: “It’s around a four to 10-week delay on a six-year construction programme. The precise opening date will depend on the amount of weather downtime which occurs in the coming weeks, with the latest date being based on weather similar to that which we have seen last month and this.

“The costs associated with the over-run will be fully covered by the contractor and will not result in any increase to the overall project cost to the taxpayer, which stands at £1.35bn as before.

“The potential over-run on the contractual completion date of between four and 10 weeks is a huge disappointment to me and everybody involved with the project, but it should be kept in perspective in terms of infrastructure projects of this scale and complexity.”

The exposed location makes the River Forth site vulnerable to changing weather conditions. Tower cranes can only be removed when gusts are lower than 25mph and work on cable stays is also sensitive to wind.

David Climie, project director at Transport Scotland, said: “We have to plan the works very, very carefully. They are being planned literally on a day-to-day basis, and we have to rely on the weather forecasting information we get in order to plan the works properly.

“It’s not that you would characterise it as it has been an awful winter, or that the weather has been particularly severe, it’s the fact we’ve had steady winds throughout a long period of time which has not created the weather windows we have needed.”

Another progress report is expected at the end of May.

However, Tory transport spokesman Liam Kerr said: “The SNP assured us that this project would be delivered on time, but these promises have proven to be worthless as, once again, we see the completion date slipping. It is simply unacceptable.”

LibDem MSP Mike Rumbles added: “Workers made it clear to me in October that this project was not going to be delivered on time and that the SNP Government had not built in enough contingency time.

“Did the Economy Secretary seriously not suspect anything until Monday?”