Tag: dft

• Clearing the decks?

  By way of further tidying up of the things that the DfT is very poor at making clear, the department has now published the definitive list of which local road upgrade schemes it scrapped and which were withdrawn by their local authority.

  To recap, 42 schemes went into a review last year, one of which was green-lit in December, with a further 16 said in March to be continuing, leaving 25 in a zombie state until the DfT confirmed earlier this month that they had been put out of their misery.

  Now the DfT has issued an October 2026 update on the Major Road Network and Large Local Majors (MRN/LLM) programme.

  This states that, during the review, 10 schemes were withdrawn on the grounds that the promoting local authority could no longer afford its funding contribution.

  Those schemes are:

  • Shrewsbury North Western Relief Road (NWRR)
  • Warrington Western Link Road
  • Rocket Junction Liverpool – M62 J4 / A58
  • Sheffield Innovation Corridor Road
  • A13/ A126 East Facing Slip Roads
  • A1237 YORR dualling Phase 2 – Wetherby Rd to A19
  • Aylesbury Eastern Link
  • Shipley Eastern Congestion Relief Road
  • West Quay Road Realignment, Southampton
  • A17 Pullover Junction

  

  The picture I have used here is of the NWRR, whose unaffordability I have written about quite a lot and which was finally cancelled by Shropshire County Council in February.

  The 15 remaining schemes were confirmed as being removed from the programme (i.e. by the DfT) following the finalisation of the review.

  Those schemes are:

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  2026.10.27

• England expects…

  Further to my post last week about the Department for Transport (DfT) spinning the so-called transparency reports on local authority highways maintenance, I have unpicked a bit more about what has – and hasn’t – happened.

  As I wrote, the headline

  Extra £220 million released for pothole repairs as figures show record road maintenance spend by councils

  Is not about new money but councils qualifying for less than half of the extra £525m of incentive funding that is in theory available for the current year.

  

  In fact, the DfT has clarified that

  all eligible councils met the requirement needed to unlock their full incentive payment for this quarter, because they have published a transparency report. This means these councils will receive £220 million in incentive payments this quarter.

  The confusing part is that only £440m of the £525m is genuinely “incentive funding”.

  As it says here, mayoral strategic authorities received

  all highway maintenance funding in full via their integrated settlement in April 2026.

  Albeit that:

  It is expected that all local highway authorities participate in the transparency reporting for the full 4-year period, regardless of incentive.

  In fact, Birmingham City Council, which operates 1% of local authority roads in England but is part of the West Midlands Combined Authority, did not publish a report.

  As for the claim that:

  Further funding will be released later in the year only if councils reach their performance targets, and can be withheld if they fail to reach them as part of the government’s efforts to hold councils to account.

  As I have pointed out, the “performance targets”, are in fact good practice reporting requirements, set out here, plus

  Spending at least the value of DfT’s highways maintenance funding on highways maintenance, ensuring this is the case in all, not just most, local highway authorities.

  The spin doctors love that word “ensuring”, don’t they? But how do you ensure that everyone complies based on an expectation that everyone will comply?

  Ironically, the DfT has pointed out that

  Figures from local councils … shows (sic) that councils are starting to properly invest in their roads with £4.9 billion total being spent this year…

  Meaning that they are due to spend three times the value of DfT’s highways maintenance funding on highways maintenance.

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  2026.10.26

• DfT spins “transparency” reports

  It might have been expected that the government would use so-called transparency reports on local authority highways maintenance for spin purposes but today’s announcement from the Department for Transport (DfT) today breaks all (non-existent) records for the cherry-picking of data.

  In fact, almost all the data in the announcement seems to duplicate existing official data.

  The story behind the headline

  Extra £220 million released for pothole repairs as figures show record road maintenance spend by councils

  is that councils have so far qualified for less than half of the extra £525m of incentive funding that is in theory available for the current year.

  The DfT also says:

  Further funding will be released later in the year only if councils reach their performance targets, and can be withheld if they fail to reach them as part of the government’s efforts to hold councils to account.

  But, as I have discussed, there are no real performance targets, just good practice reporting requirements – and the good practice is *not* filling in potholes!

  

  In fact, as it says here:

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  2026.10.22

• Exclusive: DfT finally kills off all zombie schemes

  The Department for Transport (DfT) has confirmed that all the local road schemes that were not listed in March as continuing following a review launched last year have now been officially pulled.

  It has told me that it is progressing only the 16 major road network/large local major (MRN/LLM) schemes confirmed in March and that local authorities with schemes that are not among the 16 have been informed.

  Until this point, reporting has only been ad hoc and sporadic. Following my reporting last Friday, I have now seen several more local and specialist media reports of MPs and/or local authorities being told that their MRN/LLM schemes, which were apparently still under review, are no more.

  For example, the Gazette and Herald has confirmed the demise of the A350 Melksham Bypass.

  In a letter to local LibDem MP Brian Mathew, roads minister Justin Madders blamed the Tories for not funding the scheme, and the DfT told me that MRN/LLM programme launched by the previous government was “not properly funded”.

  But the current government boasted last July that it had found “over £92 billion from the Spending Review settlement” to deliver

  the biggest boost to England’s transport infrastructure in a generation

  Out of this £92bn, the government chose to allocate just £1bn for local roads, to be shared between the so-called structures fund and the MRN/LLM.

  Madders made no mention of climate change but Mathew wrote on Facebook:

  I will keep pushing for other ways to ease transport worries, particularly better public transport and improved rail and bus services to get more people out of their cars.

  Meanwhile, Highways magazine reported that:

  Cheshire East Council is ‘deeply disappointed’ that the Department for Transport (DfT) has removed the planned improvements to the A500 from the Government’s Major Road Network Programme

  And the BBC has reported (separately) that the Blyth Relief Road, the A509 Isham bypass and the M5 Junction 9 scheme have all been canned.

  Essex Live has reported:

  Major A127 improvement work plans completely scrapped in ‘extremely disappointing’ move

  

  Notts CC leader Mick Barton with East Midlands mayor Claire Ward

  I have also worked out why the DfT has referred to 25 schemes remaining under review following the March announcement that 16 of 42 schemes put under review in July 2025 would continue.

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  2026.10.12

• Zombie schemes finally being put out of their misery

  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:

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  2026.10.09

• Ames proves the DfT wrong…again

  The Department for Transport (DfT) has finally issued the review of its decision to bury the outline business case (OBC) for the Lower Thames Crossing, with its claim that the document is “in draft” collapsing but the document still being buried.

  And I would know, because the information tribunal case that provides the definitive authority that proves the DfT has got it wrong has my name on it, literally.

  By way of a reminder, Rebecca Lush of Transport Action Network asked for the OBC after learning that it was used as the basis for a decision last year to take funding for the scheme beyond £3bn.

  Despite this, the DfT claimed that the document was “draft” and “has not been finalised”, thereby falling under the Exception at Regulation 12(4)(d) of the Environmental Information Regulations.

  Lush asked for a review in June and the DfT strung the case out for three months.

  

  Despite upholding the original decision (to release none of the document), the DfT reviewer made clear that:

  Having viewed the OBC I can see that it is dated 3rd October 2025 and is marked final version. It is therefore not an unfinished document.

  So the original claims were wholly bogus. But the DfT took another tack. In a section of the review letter that does not make grammatical sense, it stated:

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  2026.10.09

• Private firm’s train order takes GBR hype to new heights

  One of the things that irritates me about over-hyped government announcements, particularly from Labour, is the way that the hype provides cover for not doing very much while pretending to do a lot. The latest ludicrous announcement from the Department for Transport (DfT) is one of the most egregious pieces of hype it has delivered for a while.

  A press release announces:

  New British-built trains to transform railways and reindustrialise Britain
  

  faster and more frequent train journeys across the North as government supports a £1 billion investment in 29 new British-built trains on Great British Railways (GBR)

  So you are saying that a purchase of just 29 trains will simultaneously transform the railways and reindustrialise the whole country?

  Not only that but

  The new fleet of 29 battery-electric TransPennine Express trains, set to be built at Derby’s historic Litchurch Lane Works, is a clear example of what Great British Railways can deliver by bringing track and train together.

  And:

  Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, said:
  
  “It’s exactly what Great British Railways is all about – taking back control of the basics and getting Britain believing again.”

  

  This is (or should be) a routine purchase by a private rolling stock company, with its own (borrowed) money, from a private, largely foreign-owned train builder, with the stock then leased to a train operator.

  This model has been in place for decades, with the state’s contribution being to underwrite the train operator’s revenue. It has nothing to do with Great British Railways bringing track and train together; in fact, the DfT is largely responsible for the longstanding procurement gaps and loss of capability that this order begins to address.

  The only thing that has changed is that the train operator is now publicly owned.

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  2026.09.11

• Is a Thames tunnel U-turn on the way?

  A response from the Department for Transport on the question of whether it is really going to privatise a major public asset as part of its plan for the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) suggests that the penny has dropped that it is incompatible with Andy Burnham’s promise to give people more “ownership and control”.

  Officials have suddenly slipped the phrase “at this stage” into what otherwise appears to be a doubling down on the choice of the Regulated Asset Base (RAB) model, under which ownership and operations of the Dartford Crossings would transfer to a new regulated private sector entity.

  When you look at the scheme’s Accounting Officer Assessment, the choice of the RAB model looks pretty decisive:

  The project is affordable on the basis of the regulated asset base (RAB) model
  
  The decision that the LTC will be taken forward on the basis of the RAB model
  
  The RAB model is the only current option that is judged to sufficiently meet the government’s strategic objective
  
  The decision to … take forward the RAB model as the government’s preferred financing model

  As for as I can see, the DfT has not previously used “at this stage” when describing the financing model for the £10bn+ project.

  

  It has now:

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  2026.09.10

• Spring, summer, autumn: Councils still in the dark over zombie schemes

  Now that the summer is officially over, I have returned to the issue of the zombie local road schemes that appeared in the spring not to have survived a review – and it appears that promises to clarify their status in “the summer” have not been honoured.

  The story starts with a review of Major Road Network and Large Local Majors (MRN/LLM) programme announced last year, which led to the announcement in March that 16 schemes “will progress”, leaving 26 effectively, but not officially scrapped.

  As I have reported, the DfT said that these schemes were still under review, with a decision expected “later in the summer”.

  But now it’s September.

  Wiltshire Council told me that it has not heard anything further about its funding bid for the A350 Melksham bypass, while Gloucestershire CC seems to have picked up that the can had been kicked further down the road.

  

  In July it indicated that it was going to carry on progressing its scheme for new M5 junction and a bypass for the A46 near Tewkesbury, including spending more public money on it, but noted that the government funding was still uncertain. A paper to its Cabinet stated:

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  2026.09.04

• DfT accused of “state-sponsored gaslighting” over Thames tunnel

  The government seems to have dug itself into a very big hole in an attempt to bury the outline business case (OBC) for the Lower Thames Crossing, a document that was the basis for a decision to take total public funding for the “privately-funded” tunnel to £3.1bn.

  As I reported last month:

  A new report from the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) has shown how the Department for Transport is playing fast and loose with public money over the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) – and basically lying to avoid releasing the mega-project’s business case.

  This relates to a Freedom of Information/Environmental Information Regulations request for the OBC from Becca Lush of Transport Action network, which the DfT refused on the grounds that the document was “in draft”.

  

  Lush had already sought an internal review of this claim when I pointed out that:

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  2026.08.25