Returning to the subject of money down the drain, Shropshire Council Council is finally set to scrap one half of a controversial new road on which it has burned £32m of taxpayers’ money.
I wrote about the Shrewsbury North West extensively at Highways magazine, including the controversy over the possible contamination to the town’s water supply and the fake claim by the then transport secretary that the scheme was fully funded with money saved by curtailing HS2.
Better Shrewsbury Transport (BeST) have done an amazing job calling out all the problems with…building new roads in a climate emergency.
A report on the future of the Shrewsbury North West Relief Road (NWRR) will be presented to the meeting of Shropshire Council’s full Council on Thursday 26 February [2026]. The report will recommend to Council the cancellation of the NWRR due to it being unaffordable.
A road safety supervisor who struck and killed a pedestrian while speeding at almost twice the limit has avoided jail.
Martin Hayward was driving his Audi A4 at up to 56 mph in a 30 mph zone in Southampton when Clare Munn stepped out onto a crossing.
The National Highways road safety supervisor was said to be “flying” down the road and had already overtaken several cars before colliding with Ms Munn at between 40 and 50 mph.
Yes, Hayward worked for National Highways and safety is its highest priority. It has not responded to my enquiry as to whether he still works for them.
While National Highways and ministers like to talk about the delays to infrastructure projects caused by the planning process, objectors and wildlife, the announcement that transport secretary Heidi Alexander plans to cancel the planning permission for a £100m road scheme is a reminder that government throws huge amounts of money on schemes that never come to anything.
Notice is hereby given that the Secretary of State for Transport is proposing to exercise the power to make an order, without an application being made, to revoke the A47 Wansford to Sutton Development Consent Order 2023 (the DCO).
The Secretary of State is satisfied that there are exceptional circumstances, namely that following the 2025 Spending Review, the government chose not to continue its commitment to funding this scheme. Accordingly, the Secretary of State proposes to exercise the power to make an order to revoke the DCO (the proposed order).
Indeed, when Alexander announced that the £100m project and other road schemes would be scrapped, she accused the previous government of promising infrastructure projects with “no plan to pay for them”.
There was of course the earlier case of the A1 Morpeth to Ellingham scheme, which the Tories pretended was still happening even after shelving it, granting a DCO that Labour subsequently revoked, and running up a bill of £70m.
Still, Labour seems to have found £3bn of public money down the back of the sofa for the privately funded Lower Thames Crossing smart motorway.
As the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) continues to insist that there is nothing to see over the secret report into its mass transit plans, the man in charge of the project is leaving as it is kicked into the long grass.
In a post on LinkedIn beginning “Time to change direction”, Mike Birch, the authority’s mass transit director has said:
I have reached the very difficult decision to leave my position as Mass Transit Director at West Yorkshire Combined Authority.
Since joining the programme early last year, the focus has shifted from an accelerated delivery programme, to one following a more traditional sequential approach. The next few years will now be spent delivering the business case, a very different leadership focus. I am proud to have led this incredible transformative programme, with an amazing dedicated team.
I will be leaving in mid April, seeking my next challenge……
When someone leaves a senior post to seek a new challenge, it’s usually a sign that all is not well and in this case, as Birch notes, the project has been “resequenced” so that it will no longer try to do spatial planning with business case development.
This followed the “peer review” report from the National Infrastructure and Service Tranformation Authority (NISTA), which WYCA has refused to publish on the grounds that it would undermine public confidence in the programme.
Perhaps the departure of the man who at the helm when the ship hit the iceberg will help?
Transport Action Network (TAN) has published its analysis of the 16 evaluation reports on smart motorway schemes that the government finally allowed National Highways to publish this month, concluding that as expected, they showed that almost all had been costly failures.
Instead of delivering a predicted £10 billion of economic benefits, they delivered under £2bn, which is less than they cost to build. And that’s not counting the £900 million spent on retrofitting additional emergency laybys and upgrading technology.
TAN notes that Post Opening Project Evaluation (POPE) studies are produced after a new scheme is built to assess whether it worked in terms of relieving congestion, improving safety, whether the environmental mitigation worked, and overall whether they provided value for money for taxpayers.
It focuses on the 11 schemes with five-year studies and the most reliable data, finding that only two came anywhere near delivering their claimed benefits.
The other nine were an economic disaster, costing the economy over £400m on (lack of) time savings, when National Highways had predicted over £7 billion of benefits. This is before counting the cost of building these nine ‘smart’ motorways, which comes in at a staggering £1.6 billion. This doesn’t include the £900 million that has been spent on retrofitting more emergency refuges and upgrading the technology across all ‘smart’ motorways. That means that these nine ‘smart’ motorways have cost the economy well over £2 billion.
Looking across all 11 schemes, the economy lost over £500 million, showing how bad these motorways are financially, before any consideration of safety.
Alongside West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s (WYCA) refusal to disclose the secret “peer review” into its mass transit plans, it has totally embarrassed itself in its response to a similar request.
details of expenditure on consultants and external professional services connected with mass transit activity from January 2024 to present.
Specifically, please provide: A list of consultancy or professional services suppliers engaged.
The value and duration of each engagement.
The procurement route used for each engagement (for example open tender, framework call-off, or direct award).
The total consultancy expenditure incurred during this period.
All pretty routine transparency information, you might think. But WYCA responded:
the information you are seeking may be exempt under Section 36(2) of the FOIA. Information to which this section applies is exempt information if, in the reasonable opinion of a qualified person, disclosure of the information under this Act would or would be likely to prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs.
As the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) continues to hide the independent peer review report into its mass transit plan, suspicions are growing that the underlying problem is an insistence within government that the authority should drop its proposals for trams and settle for a few more buses.
At a recent meeting of the authority, mayor Tracy Brabin quoted chancellor and Leeds MP Rachel Reeves as saying that “mass transit means trams”, adding that the authority is conscious of the need to prove to government that tram (rather than buses) is the right option.
Mass Transit is a large-scale public transport system, which may comprise one or more of the following transport technologies: advanced bus rapid transit, light rail, tram or tram-train vehicles.
Someone should tell Reeves. She stated very clearly to the Yorkshire Post:
West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) has refused to disclose the controversial peer review of its mass transit plans on the grounds that disclosure “will impact the programme by a loss of public confidence” – effectively admitting that the review was highly critical of the scheme.
The admission is a vindication for the Tory councillor who has claimed that WYCA was putting forward a “dishonest” version of the review’s findings and suggests that the outrage that West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin expressed over the suggestion was confected.
To recap, the review by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) led to the WYCA’s plans for mass transit (probably trams) being put back from the early 2030’s to the end of the decade.
Both Brabin and transport ministers have tried to put a brave face on the situation but have refused to publish the report for various reasons, although it was made available to members of the combined authority.
At a meeting last month, Cllr Alan Lamb, the leader of the Conservative opposition on Leeds City Council, alleged that the public presentation of the report was “dishonest” and that people needed to see the report itself because it shows that “mass transit is in peril”. Brabin said she was “outraged” by the claim.
But WYCA has now effectively admitted that this is true and that the situation set out in the report is so dire that the public would lose confidence in the scheme if this were known.
on the balance of probabilities releasing the information will impact the programme by a loss of public confidence
Although the response sought to tie this up with issues around “a free and frank exchange of views by NISTA” and a report “provided in confidence”, it clearly stated that it would be “public confidence” that would be damaged.
It also referred to:
the real and significant likelihood that disclosure would prejudice WYCA’s ability to manage and develop a complex, high-value transport programme.
As Cllr Lamb said “mass transit is in peril” if you look behind the curtain.
National Highways has published a response to the Sunday Times story this week that said the £11bn Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) is “poised to be built with foreign steel”, but I’m not sure whether its a carelessly worded rebuttal or a carefully worded non denial.
The gist of the Sunday Times story is that UK-based steel manufacturers are not able, and will not be able, to produce the “low embodied carbon steel” that the government-owned company has promised to use as part of its greenwashing.
Industry sources say this will exclude domestic manufacturers from the tender and force ministers to approve the provision of steel from abroad that meets the UK’s green targets.
Clearly the alternative to sourcing steel from abroad is to drop the “low embodied carbon steel” pledge.
There is also a question of *when* as the tunnel is nowhere near being built but:
Tata Steel is in the process of building an electric arc furnace on the site of Britain’s biggest blast furnace steelworks in Port Talbot, south Wales. It is understood that the furnace will not be up and running to tender for the multimillion-pound Lower Thames Crossing contract.
The National Highways webpage starts off by saying the Sunday Times claim that the LTC is set to be built with foreign steel “is not the case”, adding:
No procurement process for steel is currently under way.
Our Delivery Partners have carried out early market engagement simply to understand existing capability ahead of launching procurements later this year. This engagement shows that the UK steel sector can meet between 85% and 90% of the project’s requirements, reflecting both the capability and ambition of British manufacturers.
A generational UK Government commitment to modernise Welsh rail is set to support 12,000 jobs across Wales.
The Welsh and UK Government’s plan sets out a long-term commitment that will put an end to the previous government’s chronic chop-and-changing and underinvestment that held the country back for too long.
The Prime Minister is set to formally endorse the Transport for Wales vision for the future of Welsh rail today [Wednesday 18 February] – agreeing that it should set the framework for their pipeline of projects and committing the UK Government to work with the Welsh Government to deliver this pipeline as quickly as possible.
So, what exactly is going on?
This investment will see the further transformation of Wales’ rail network, building on the Welsh Government’s £1.1bn in upgrading and electrifying the Core Valley Lines and £800m investment in a new rail fleet.
Together, both governments will provide better and more frequent services for passengers across the country, with the UK Government committing significant funding to deliver the next generation of Welsh rail projects.
Using the almost half a billion pounds promised this Spending Review, seven new stations are set to be built across Wales – a massive win for commuters and a boost for the construction industry.
Ok, so you’ve reannounced some spending, including a “new rail fleet” that was announced nearly a decade ago, but what about the “long-term commitment”?
Transport Insights 
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