Transport Insights

The saga/farce of the cancellation of the A1 to Morpeth to Ellingham scheme, secretly shelved by the Tories in 2022, continues with notice that Labour intends to revoke the Development Consent Order that was granted last year before the election.

According to the Department for Transport (DfT):

The Secretary of State for Transport proposes to make an order to revoke the A1 in Northumberland: Morpeth to Ellingham Development Consent Order 2024.

By way of explanation, the DfT says the transport secretary “is satisfied that there are exceptional circumstances that make it appropriate to exercise the power to revoke the A1 in Northumberland: Morpeth to Ellingham Development Consent Order 2024 (“the DCO”). Accordingly, the Secretary of State proposes to make an order to revoke the DCO.”

It’s not really an explanation of course, and New Civil Engineer reports that  Northumberland Council deputy leader Richard Wearmouth said that the move “feels needless and spiteful”.

But it brings up another question about the secret shelving of the scheme, which National Highways and its regulator the ORR lied about.

National Highways submitted a statement in support of its DCO application whose purpose was literally “to demonstrate that the Scheme will be adequately funded through the Road Investment Strategy (RIS) and therefore that funding is no impediment to the delivery of the Scheme”.

Of course funding – or rather a lack of it – was an impediment to the delivery of the scheme.

The statement was true at the time it was made and at the time that the Planning Inspectorate sent its recommendation. In fact, the Planning Inspectorate’s recommendation letter of October 2021 states:

The Funding Statement also recorded that the Applicant is a government owned company responsible for delivering major projects within the SRN. The Government’s commitment to fully fund the Proposed Development as part of RIS1 and subsequently through RIS2 demonstrate that the Proposed Development will be fully funded by the DfT and consequently it is not dependent on funding contributions from other parties.

But a few months later, this ceased to be true; all funding was withdrawn.

Should National Highways have told the Planning Inspectorate, which was managing the case while ministers regularly delayed a decision on the DCO – including launching various consultations – what had happened?

The decision letter in the name of the then transport secretary, Mark Harper, appears to rely on the promise in the October 2024 Network North hoax document that the scheme would be funded, something that was baffling at the time as the scheme was supposed to be funded through the RIS process.