Transport Insights

It looks like ministers have begun the task of officially putting the 26 zombie local road schemes out of their misery, more than six months after it became clear to anyone who was paying attention that they were all but dead.

As I reported in LTT/TransportXtra in July:

Confusion surrounds a raft of local road upgrades after a Government review announced last summer, with many councils still awaiting decisions on their bids amid huge funding pressures.

The DfT said in March that of 42 schemes major road network (MRN) or large local major (LLM) schemes placed under review as part of the 2025 Spending Review, just 16 “will continue”.

This left 26 schemes in limbo…

There were supposed to be formal decisions on these “later in the summer”, but it never happened.

Now, a couple of schemes have been officially killed off.

The Alton Herald reports:

The Government has scrapped plans for major improvements to the A31 through Farnham, according to the town’s MP.

Gregory Stafford, the Conservative MP for Farnham and Bordon, has called the decision a “betrayal” and accused the Government of failing his constituents.

Mr Stafford said Roads Minister Justin Madders telephoned him on Thursday evening (October 8) to confirm the scheme would not proceed.

Given that it has been obvious for a while that the scheme was canned and that the minister phoned him personally, Stafford throwing his toys out of his pram seems a bit ungrateful.

people standing in a field looking at a map

Meanwhile, the Derbyshire Times reports:

The Department for Transport has removed the Staveley Bypass from the Major Road Network (MRN) and Large Local Majors (LLM) Programme, following the programme review.

There is similarly a lot of moaning from local politicians, but

A Department for Transport spokesperson added: “The previous government did not fund these projects. Given the challenging financial picture we inherited, we have had to make difficult decisions on a number of road projects and can only progress schemes that are good value for money for taxpayers.”

Quite why the previous government should have funded a pipeline of potential future projects is beyond me. This government announced in July last year:

backed by over £92 billion from the Spending Review settlement, the government is delivering the biggest boost to England’s transport infrastructure in a generation, and unlocking schemes that deliver for the taxpayer and drive growth

To support local journeys, the government is also committing support to continue 28 local road schemes vital to connecting and growing communities.

So Labour seems to be having it both ways. We have put a lot of money into transport infrastructure but we don’t have much money to put into transport infrastructure.

And “difficult decisions” or not, obviously they should only progress schemes that are good value for money for taxpayers.

Anyway, we can expect to see a lot more grumbling as more zombies are killed.