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Going the extra mile for your job is always encouraged, but for hundreds of staff at the Tate & Lyle factory it has been an inconvenient necessity.

Delays to Crossrail works upgrading a railway bridge have forced many employees to walk an additional mile to work for more than a year.

A footbridge near the 140-year-old factory in Silvertown has been out of action for nearly 18 months despite promises it would be renovated in only six weeks. Now it will not reopen until at least September.

Without it, staff and visitors arriving at the 45-acre site on foot or by the Docklands Light Railway must take a 20-minute detour to the west of the bridge to reach the factory entrance. An alternative route to the east for 1.4 miles takes about 25 minutes.

Tate & Lyle employs 850 workers, many of whom live locally. About 500 have depended for decades on the bridge as the easiest and safest route to and from the 24-hour site.

Factory bosses fear staff are at risk of being mugged on the routes after police warnings of nearly a dozen incidents recorded in a month. There is also the risk of construction traffic.

Security guards have been drafted in to escort workers to more well-lit areas late at night.

Customers and visitors coming for job interviews have been known to arrive “flustered and in a bad mood”, staff said.

The Crossrail branch being worked on, running along the old north Woolwich line, will eventually take passengers into central London from Abbey Wood via Canary Wharf.

Strengthening works on the concrete footbridge began in 2017 but the fenced-off site appeared in disarray when the Evening Standard visited last week.

Crossrail chiefs admitted in January they had no idea when the line, which has soared £2.8 billion over budget to £17.6 billion, would open. Gerald Mason, Tate & Lyle senior vice-president, said: “I understand that projects face challenges but for this to go from six weeks to 18 months is quite incredible. We feel like we’ve been forgotten.

“The footbridge not being open really makes a big difference to about 500 employees here who rely on it and cuts us off completely from the community we’ve been part of for 140 years.”

"I understand that projects face challenges but for this to go from six weeks to 18 months is quite incredible" Gerald Mason, Tate & Lyle

A Crossrail spokesman said: “The footbridge over the railway at Silvertown is an important local crossing, particularly for workers at the nearby Tate & Lyle factory.

“The footbridge is in a poor condition and will re-open in September once remedial works are completed. We apologise for any inconvenience caused by the closure of the footbridge.”

The Tate and Lyle site is one of the last great factories on the Thames and can refine more than one million tons of cane sugar every year into 600 products, from cubes to flavoured syrups used in coffee shops.

Tate & Lyle has its own jetty on the Thames, where 40 cargo ships dock annually from cane fields in Fiji, Mozambique, Belize, South Africa and the Caribbean.