Transport Insights

Labour ministers have stepped in to take the credit (again) for a £218m local road scheme that they falsely claimed last year to have green-lit and which the last Conservative government allocated £110m six years ago.

According to the Department for Transport (DfT):

Tens of thousands of people across Lincoln and Lincolnshire are set to benefit from faster journeys, after the government confirmed funding for the North Hykeham Relief Road today (18 February 2026).

Roads minister Simon Lightwood, who never knowingly tells the truth, said:

We’re putting our money where our mouth is, with a £110 million investment that will mean faster journeys and less congestion. 

It is not Labour’s money but taxpayers’ money and in fact, the road was funded from a much earlier Major Road Network/Large Local Majors (MRN/LLM) budget.

To be fair, the DfT press release does note that:

First proposed in the mid-2000s, the relief road has long been anticipated

If I had a pound for every time the government (Tory or Labour) has tried to make political capital out of the same £110m, I could build my own relief road.

In 2020, I noted (in a complicated story about vehicle excise duty hypothecation) that the road was cited in the National Infrastructure Strategy and had been awarded £110m and entry to the LLM programme.

To this day, Lincolnshire County Council’s own webpage for the scheme states:

£110 million was allocated for the project in November 2020 from the Department for Tranport’s ‘Large Local Majors’ programme.

The remaining budget will be funded by Lincolnshire County Council and developer contributions, which the council will forward fund.

Last July, the DfT claimed that the scheme was one of over 50 road and rail upgrades given the “green light”, when it was still working on its business case.

Transport secretary Heidi Alexander claimed that not binning the scheme that the Tories had promised to fund five years earlier was part of Labour’s “Plan for Change”.

As this Highways magazine story notes, last November Cllr Michael Cheyne, executive member for highways at Lincolnshire CC, said:

Now that we’ve been given the all clear by Government to move forward, the next step is to officially appoint a contractor. 

Labour’s dishonesty about putting our money where its mouth is is made worse by the fact that it is still refusing to say what the current budget is for local roads upgrades.