Transport Insights

I have a response – of sorts – from the Office of Rail of Road (ORR) on the question of what it knew about the secret decision to shelve the A1 Morpeth to Ellingham scheme. It’s a response that shows the regulator to be unable or unwilling to be straight with the public.

To recap, last week the Newcastle Chronicle reported, based on a leaked Department for Transport report, that:

…during the 2021 Spending Review the funding for the scheme was “withdrawn” and the plan was “deprioritised”. The report adds: “The funding decision was not made public, but we instructed National Highways to cease work on the scheme.”

Rather than answer my question about what and when it was told about the decision to shelve the scheme during a time when its dashboard continued to show it as a live scheme, the regulator told me:

“ORR’s enhancements reporting showed the delays for some enhancement schemes, including the A1 Morpeth to Ellingham scheme. The detail of ongoing governmental policy decisions is not something that ORR can include in regulatory reporting of National Highways’ performance.”

Dismissing the shelving of a scheme and the withdrawal of funding as part of ongoing governmental policy decisions is as worrying as it is disingenuous.

Is the ORR telling us that live National Highways enhancement schemes listed in a road investment strategy that is intended to provide certainty are quietly shelved all the time while it pretends that they are merely “delayed”?

If this is true and the ORR is constantly hiding such developments from the public, it is even more pointless as a regulator than I thought it was.

I have reminded the ORR of my original question, which it can only delay answering because of the Freedom of Information Act.