London's Garden Bridge project officially abandoned

A £200m plan to build a bridge covered with trees over the River Thames in central London has officially been abandoned.

The Garden Bridge Trust said it had failed to raise private funds since losing the support of the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan in April.

It comes after a review of the project recommended it be scrapped.

At least £37.4m of public funds has already been spent on the project and a further £9m is at risk.

Mr Khan said it was his "duty to ensure taxpayers' money was spent responsibly".

"I have been clear since before I became mayor that no more London taxpayers' money should be spent on this project and when I took office I gave the Garden Bridge Trust time to try and address the multiple serious issues with it," he said.

"Londoners will, like me, be very angry that London taxpayers have now lost tens of millions of pounds - committed by the previous mayor on a project that has amounted to nothing."

The mayor also refused to provide a financial guarantee to cover ongoing maintenance of the bridge, estimated to cost about £3m a year, which the trust said would be covered by closing the bridge to the general public for 12 days a year so it could be rented to corporate clients .

The trust blamed losing the mayor's support for its inability to raise the necessary private funds to complete the project.

It said all potential benefactors and trustees decided the project could not happen without the support of the mayor.

But as early as January it filed accounts for 2016 at Companies House in which its chairman Lord Davies admitted the project was not currently a "going concern" and that the trust had failed to raise any private funds since August 2016.

The same accounts showed the trust had yet to secure the land on the South Bank of the Thames for the bridge's southern landing. By April, when the project lost Mr Khan's support, the trust had still not secured the land on the South Bank.