Transport Insights

The transport stories you won't see in the industry-friendly media

Author

Chris Ames

Tag: dft

  • DfT confirms funding withdrawn from A1 scheme

    I have a further explanation from the Department for Transport (DfT) on why it doesn’t think that National Highways and the Office or Rail and Road (ORR) misled the public and Parliament when they said the A1 Morpeth to Ellingham scheme would start construction in 2022-23, despite being deprioritised and its funding withdrawn.

    It isn’t really much of an explanation and appears to depend on conflating the suggestion that these bodies should have said the scheme was cancelled (it wasn’t; I didn’t) with what I actually said, which is that they should not have actively pretended it was going ahead within a specific timeframe, when it wasn’t.

    I think the top line is that:

    The claims National Highways and the Office of Rail and Road misled the public are untrue, as the positions they set out were in accordance with the status of ministerial decisions on the projects at the time.

    This depends on pretending that schemes going ahead soon and not (yet) being cancelled is the same thing. In addition: 

    A Spending Review funding allocation is not the same as a project decision; the latter requires specific approval by a Transport Minister. 

    The DfT also says that the scheme remained in the RIS portfolio [which] is reflected in the language used by the National Audit Office (NAO) report in September 2022 and the subsequent National Highways delivery plan.

    It is absolutely true that the scheme remained without funding in the portfolio awaiting a final decision on whether to proceed, as the NAO revealed and as I reported.

    But again, the DfT is trying to pretend that being in the portfolio without funding awaiting a final decision on whether to proceed is compatible with what National Highways said and the ORR also reported, which is that it was going ahead *that year*.

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  • National Highways and ORR misled public and Parliament over A1 scheme

    Looking back at what was said in 2022 about the secret decision to shelve the A1 Morpeth to Ellingham scheme, it is quite clear that both National Highways and its regulator misled the public, and both organisations have conspicuously failed to deny that they did so.

    I have previously noted that the Tory government’s decision to withdraw all funding from the scheme after the 2021 Spending Review is cited in a leaked report obtained by the Newcastle Chronicle.

    However, the National Audit Office’s (NAO) November 2022 report cites the scheme as one of two that had been shelved earlier that year:

    In February 2022, DfT formally notified National Highways that two projects on the watchlist had been deprioritised as an outcome of the 2021 Spending Review. These two projects remained in the portfolio awaiting a final decision on whether to proceed but their funding has been removed.

    So to be absolutely clear, between February and November 2022 the A1 Morpeth to Ellingham scheme had no funding.

    Let’s look then at National Highways’ Delivery Plan 2022-2023, which was published pretty well in the middle of that period. Under “Our activities during 2022-23”; it states:

    We will start work on two schemes [including] A1 Morpeth to Ellingham which will upgrade multiple sections of the A1 to dual carriageway to provide continuous high quality dual carriageway from Newcastle to Ellingham, north of Alnwick.

    A pretty unambiguous pledge to start work on a scheme that had no funding and unarguably a direct lie but National Highways has not responded to my request for explanation or comment.

    Similarly the Office of Rail and Road’s (ORR) Annual Assessment of National Highways’ performance April 2021 to March 2022, “Presented to Parliament pursuant to section 10(8) of the Infrastructure Act 2015” and “Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed on 14 July 2022” lists the scheme as one of “12 schemes where RIS2 funding was reduced in SR21”.

    So already the public and Parliament are being misled by the ORR’s description of the scheme as having had its funding “reduced”, rather than outright withdrawn.

    To make matters worse, the ORR then presented Parliament with a graphic (above) showing the construction period for the scheme beginning in 2022-23.

    It then falsely claimed that the scheme was “currently forecasting spend of £255m against a RP2 baseline of £39m”. The scheme was not currently forecasting any spend as it was unfunded.

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  • DfT not entirely certain on return of (Great) British Rail (ways)

    It’s great to see another rail service (London to Essex c2c services) return to public control, with the Department for Transport (DfT) highlighting – somewhat unconvincingly – the potential savings to the taxpayer.

    In an announcement on Sunday, the DfT described the development, under the Public Ownership Act, as a “step towards Great British Railways” but it’s very much Labour’s version of Great British Railways.

    When I hear the name, I can’t help remembering that it’s Grant Shapps’ bullshit branding – basically British Rail with “Great” at the front and “ways” at the back. What a difference adding two carriages to the set makes.

    The Shapps version was the integration of track and train without nationalising the train operating companies, which leaves the DfT claiming that both public ownership of c2c and the company’s already popular services are “driving growth”.

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  • A1 cancellation lies – who knew what when?

    Local news outlets in the North East are reporting a potentially huge scandal over a recently cancelled National Highways scheme, with a shocking tale of deceit potentially involving the government-owned company, the previous (Tory) government and the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).

    The Newcastle Chronicle reports that:

    Department for Transport staff were ordered to stop working on plans to dual the A1 in Northumberland back in 2021 – three years before it was approved by the Conservative Government, leaked documents have revealed. 

    And:

    …during the 2021 Spending Review the funding for the scheme was “withdrawn” and the plan was “deprioritised”. The report adds: “The funding decision was not made public, but we instructed National Highways to cease work on the scheme.”

    In another twist on this story, the Chronicle notes that the scheme was included in the Network North announcement following the cancellation of the northern leg of HS2.

    This goes some way to explaining something that baffled me at the time. In October 2023 I reported that:

    …the A1 scheme is described in the current RIS programme as a ‘committed’ scheme. As part of the process of seeking a development consent order (DCO), National Highways submitted a document to the Planning Inspectorate (PINS) asserting that the scheme was funded.

    However, as Highways has reported, the scheme has been held up by repeated delays from ministers. So far there remains an unpublished recommendation from PINS.

    In its annual assessment of National Highways 2022-23, the Office of Rail and Road noted that the scheme should have started work during that year but was delayed by ministers’ postponement of the DCO decision.

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  • More random numbers from the DfT

    The Department for Transport (DfT) has put out another press release with big numbers quoted out of context, this time a “New £63 million boost for Britain’s electric vehicle revolution”.

    Whether the boost is new is always the first question, with the age-old tradition of announcing a funding envelope and then each tranche of funding from it as a separate “new” boost.

    Image: DfT

    It looks as if the £63m is drawn from the “£200m for charging infrastructure” announced in the Autumn budget.

    The details are quite vague: £25m for local authorities, £8m for the NHS and the rest apparently for a “major new grant scheme to help businesses install charging points at depots nationwide”, which the government says it “is launching” but only on the basis that it intends to launch it.

    The money is said to “build on” – implicitly to be additional to – the “£400 million announced in the Spending Review to support charging infrastructure, including on the strategic road network”, or rather the redirected portion of the £950 rapid charging fund that Labour scrapped.

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  • Uncertainty remains over local road upgrades

    It’s worth returning to Tuesday’s announcement about rail and road projects, in which the government falsely claimed to have green-lit 28 local road schemes, while actually confirming two, for what transport secretary Heidi Alexander told MPs about the schemes that are not (yet) getting funding.

    We know expectations were raised. And, sadly, we know there was no plan to pay for them. Indeed, schemes that formed part of the previous government’s major road network programme, all of which were meant to be in construction by now, have not progressed as expected. Almost half are yet to reach the outline business case stage, despite being in the programme for 6 years. Years of dither and delay wasted everyone’s time and left communities in limbo. This, I must say, is the tragic legacy of the farcical ‘Network North’ announcement made by the previous Prime Minister.

    I have probably covered the major road network (MRN), which ran alongside large local majors (LLM), more closely than any other journalist, noting how it was supposed to be part of a National Roads Fund paid for hypothecated Vehicle Excise Duty, but the money was never there and schemes just dribbled out.

    I also wrote extensively about how the Network North shambles promised to ensure that schemes happened but that really only meant potentially paying the full cost at outline business case stage for schemes that had got significantly more expensive since.

    The Department for Transport also suggested that £1.6bn MRN/LLM funding – focused on the North and Midlands – could continue into the next parliament (now the current parliament).

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  • Not all good news

    The local authority that will receive government funding for one of the two local road schemes that the Department for Transport (DfT) *actually announced* yesterday is far from happy and expects the cost of the scheme to rise further.

    The Middlewich Eastern Bypass is a 1.6-mile bypass including a new bridge over a railway line and a combined cycleway and footway. Cheshire East Council has told me that the estimated total cost of the scheme is currently £97.941m, of which the DfT will provide a maximum funding contribution of £48.037m, including £1.257m already paid.

    “Cheshire East Council is solely responsible for meeting any expenditure over and above this maximum amount.”

    Yesterday the council’s leader and deputy leader, Nick Mannion and Michael Gorman, issued a statement with a strong good news, bad news flavour:

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  • Labour re-announces road schemes “in construction”

    The Department for Transport’s (DfT) announcement of a “green light” for 28 local road schemes has fallen apart as quickly as the Tories’ notorious Network North announcement, as it emerges that many of the green lit schemes have been in construction for a while and others are still awaiting confirmation of cash promised years ago.

    I wrote earlier that the DfT had clarified that only two of the Large Local Major (LLM) and Major Road Network (MRN) schemes had actually had funding confirmed (today) but the department’s list of schemes with “funding confirmed” (now at the bottom of the announcement) includes schemes that are not only in construction, but were promised funding as far back as 2018.

    These include “Gallows Corner” and “A595 Grizebeck Bypass”, both of which were promised money in 2018 by the then transport secretary Chris “failing” Grayling, even before the MRN existed as a network.

    Also on the “funding confirmed” list is the North Hykeham Relief Road, which was the only new road project announced in the Tories’ November 2020 National Infrastructure Strategy.

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  • DfT doubles down on planned publication

    National Highways’ delivery plan and safety action plan for the current financial year will be published this month, the Department for Transport (DfT) has told me.

    The government-owned company’s Interim Settlement for the current year, during which no road investment strategy is in place, states that to support progress towards achieving its December 2025 casualty reduction target “National Highways must deliver a series of safety improvements set out in its Safety Action Plan for 2025/26”.

    The safety action plan has not been published, but in May roads minister Lilian Greenwood told fellow Labour MP Ruth Cadbury, who is chair of the Transport Select Committee, that it “will form part of National Highways 2025-26 delivery plan for the Interim Settlement which will be published in the coming months”.

    I have requested the plan under the Freedom of Information Act from the DfT, National Highways and the Office of Rail and Road but each refused my request on the spurious grounds that a document that was not produced for publication is intended for future publication alongside another document.

    In response to a review request, the DfT has now told me: “We expect the requested information to be published in July 2025.”

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  • Rapid u-turn on green light for 28 local road schemes

    The Department for Transport (DfT) has confirmed that the “green light for over 50 road and rail upgrades” is not actually a green light for around half the schemes involved.

    The claim that more than 28 local road upgrades had been “given the green light” was an obvious lie. At best, 26 of the upgrades have, or still have, an amber light.

    I quoted and queried this bit, suggesting that there was some sleight of hand over the number of road schemes that have actually been green lit.

    To support local journeys, the government is also committing support to continue 28 local road schemes vital to connecting and growing communities. These schemes, which include the Middlewich Eastern Bypass and A382 Drumbridges to Newton Abbot schemes, are not motorways or trunk A-roads, but junctions, bypasses and traffic-easing projects which will improve millions of congested commutes and unlock further housing and jobs.   

    The DfT has now confirmed to me that the only confirmed schemes are the Middlewich Eastern Bypass and the A382 Drumbridges to Newton Abbot – a large local major (LLM) and a major road network (MRN) scheme respectively – while the others have been given ongoing development funding.

    Having followed the funding for LLM and MRN schemes for years, I know that final funding is confirmed two or three schemes at a time, not 28 all at the same time.

    The DfT has not “given the green light” to 50 road and rail upgrades.

    Image: Cheshire East Council 

    2 responses to “Rapid u-turn on green light for 28 local road schemes”

    1. Throwing random numbers at the problem – Transport Insights

      […] *UPDATE: I have now confirmed that the government has not green lit 28 local road schemes* […]

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    2. Labour re-announces road schemes “in construction” – Transport Insights

      […] wrote earlier that the DfT had clarified that only two of the Large Local Major (LLM) and Major Road Network […]

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