The defect which caused the Forth Road Bridge to close to all traffic for 19 days was unforeseeable, a report has found.

Holyrood’s infrastructure and capital investment committee determined that the bridge’s faulty truss end link “could not have been foreseen” after hearing testimony from a range of witnesses who have worked on the bridge.

However, the report concluded that the Forth Estuary Transport Authority's (Feta) decision in December 2011 to drop plans to address the “efficacy of the truss end link mechanism” was made as a direct consequence of the Scottish Government’s cut to its funding.

One witness who worked on the bridge was former bridgemaster, Barry Colford, who told the committee: “We carried out our inspections, and the problem was not foreseeable. We spent a lot of time looking at the truss end links, and we had many consulting engineers assisting us in that.”

The report also states that the risk-based inspection regime which the bridge has undergone for a number of years “went beyond the standard UK inspection requirements for motorway and trunk road bridges.”

Transport Scotland spent £3m over the 19-day period carrying out immediate repairs. However, the total repair bill for the bridge is estimated to reach £19.7m.

Committee convener Jim Eadie MSP said: “The committee heard from a number of structural engineers and representatives from Feta and Transport Scotland. All of our witnesses were of the view that the defect which caused the closure of the bridge could not have been foreseen.

“As a result we have concluded that the decision by Feta to reprioritise the proposed work on the truss end links was an appropriate course of action on the basis of both the prevailing financial circumstances and the engineering advice available at the time.

“The committee concluded that the development of the Forth Replacement Crossing would have had an influence on decisions to reprioritise certain capital projects. The committee is of the view that Feta dealt with the challenge of reprioritising its capital proposals in a professional and responsible manner.”

The Forth Road Bridge is expected to be largely replaced by the end of this year by the new £1.325bn Queensferry Crossing.