Transport Insights

Shropshire Council has shelved the £215m Shrewsbury North West Relief Road (NWRR) after the Department for Transport (DfT) made clear that it will not put up any money beyond the £54m originally pledged.

The council, which is now run by the Liberal Democrats, said leader Heather Kidd and deputy leader Alex Wagner met DfT officers earlier this week to “discuss the scheme, seek clarity about funding and explore options with regards to its future”:

During the meeting officers from the DfT confirmed that they would not award any more money than had been originally allocated to the project. Furthermore, the Local Transport Fund of £136.4m, originally mooted by the previous administration to fund the scheme, has been replaced with a Local Transport Grant totalling only £48m.

However, they also confirmed that the council would need to cancel work on the road before a formal discussion could proceed with Roads Minister Lilian Greenwood MP, the Department for Transport and other parts of central government about the £39m it has already spent on the scheme.

The council said it had “paused all work” on the scheme but Cllr Kidd said the council had no choice but to cancel it, faced with a funding gap of over £176m:

“Through our conversations with the Department for Transport, it was made very clear that no more funding would be allocated to the scheme. This makes it simply unaffordable.

“As you can imagine, there are many implications for cancelling the road however we really have no choice.”

Both Tory and LibDem council administrations have previously said a reason for not cancelling the scheme was that it would have to repay funding already given.

It said that due to planning delays, significant increases in global construction costs, and concerns with the scheme’s governance arrangements, the forecast costs of the scheme have increased substantially since the Outline Business Case (OBC).

Following an extensive procurement exercise, the scheme’s total cost, some eight years later, is now £215m.

The council pointed out that the cost of the road was originally estimated at £87.2m. Previously agreed funding is made up from:

• DfT Large Local Majors Funding – £54.4m
• The former Marches Local Partnership (LEP) funding – £4.2m
• S106 developer contributions – £8.6m
• Balance funded by Shropshire Council – £19.8m (NWRR) and £0.2m for the Oxon Link Road (OLR)

In October 2023, the then transport secretary Mark Harper said in an interview with the BBC that the Government would fund 100% of the scheme, but in January 2024 I revealed that the DfT was saying that it was only committed to paying at best the full cost at OBC stage.

This January, I revealed that the new government was no longer promising to honour Tory pledges under the unfunded Local Transport Fund.