Tag: funding

• 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

• Another Schrödinger’s road scheme

  Confusion abounds over which local road upgrades are potentially going ahead with Department for Transport (DfT) funding, something that seems to originate with the department not being straightforward about the status of schemes that were culled in a recent review.

  In the context of the government’s statement that it will cut the DfT’s capital investment budget by £700m to help pay for the Defence Investment Plan, the BBC reports:

  Council chiefs fear a planned new motorway junction could be “sacrificed” in the government’s proposal to reallocate funds to defence.
  …
  County councillor Julian Tooke, who leads on infrastructure on the council, said: “We are very concerned that Gloucestershire’s need for improvements to junction 9 of the M5 and the A46 may get sacrificed.”
  
  The Department for Transport (DfT) said it will not comment on funding prospects for junction 9 at this stage

  The penny does not seem to have dropped that the scheme was effectively shelved when it was not among the 16 Major Road Network and Large Local Majors (MRN/LLM) schemes that it was announced in March would

  continue following the 2025 MRN review

  

  That was a reference to this announcement last July, when the DfT gave a list of 42 schemes “under consideration” – i.e. being reviewed. The M5 scheme was among them, albeit that it had only been listed for outline business case development costs.

  By implication, it is not “continuing”. I don’t know why the DfT cannot just say that.

  In April, Transport Action Network wrote to the DfT to ask for clarification of the 26 schemes that were in the original list of (42) schemes under consideration and not part of the “continuing” 16.

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  2026.07.16

• Two cheers for small beer

  There’s a bit more from road safety minister Lilian Greenwood about this week’s announcement of £5m for four new schemes under the Safer Roads Fund, with an acknowledgement that the cash only takes road safety “a little further forward”.

  Posting on LinkedIn, Greenwood referred to awards to existing schemes at the House of Lords event on Tuesday and directly named the four new schemes, but not the individual amounts awarded:

  There’s a lot more work still to do. But we’ve moved that work a little further forward as I announced a further £5 million to support four new Safer Roads Fund schemes across the country:

  • The A188 through Newcastle and North Tyneside
  • The A1074 from Longwater to Norwich City
  • The A611 Hucknall Road in Nottingham
  • The A319 in Chobham to the A320 in Guildford

  

  People in the western half of England might wonder whether “across the country” is a bit of an exaggeration for just four schemes in the North East, the East Midlands, East Anglia and the South East.

  Meanwhile the scheme in Nottingham (which Greenwood represents) has had some press coverage, but there is still no sign of an announcement from Norfolk and the Department for Transport doesn’t seem to think the cash warrants a press release.

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  2026.07.09

• Just £5m for new road safety schemes

  The Department for Transport (DfT) has allocated around £5m for four new schemes under the Safer Roads Fund (SRF) but the small scale of the funding serves to show the paucity of the government’s ambition on road safety.

  At an event in the House of Lords yesterday, Road safety minister Lilian Greenwood was said to have “committed to further investment in Safer Roads Fund schemes”.

  The DfT has said there is cash for four schemes, which are in Surrey, Norfolk, Newcastle and Nottingham.

  Some of these allocations have already been made public. Surrey Live reported:

  Minister Lilian Greenwood is set to confirm that the road connecting the A319 in Chobham to the A320 in Guildford will receive £1.3m in government money, in a speech on Tuesday

  The Newcastle Chronicle reported:

  Key road through North Tyneside and Newcastle to receive £1.6m of road safety funding

  It looks as if some of these were the announcement of construction funding for schemes that received design funding in earlier rounds of the SRF.

  

  The DfT says the cash is “part of Round 4 of funding under the Safer Roads Fund”, with no decisions made on whether there will be further funding rounds.

  The logic of that is that the new cash is not just part of Round 4 but the whole of Round 4.

  Originally (in 2016) the SRF was £175m, but only £100m was allocated in the first round, followed by £95m in a two-tranche second round. The DfT seems to be counting all this as three rounds.

  Whether the £5m is a new allocation or reallocation of unused cash from the last round, it takes the total to somewhere around £200m.

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  2026.07.08

• A long time in politics

  The fallout over the shelving of two road schemes in the East Midlands to pay for “defence” continues, with a piece in the Times from regional mayor Claire Ward, in which she points out with some justification that the decision has simultaneously trashed the concepts of a road investment strategy (RIS) and devolution.

  It’s a good opening, albeit one that starts with a version of a cliché:

  A day is a long time in politics. But it shouldn’t be. Last Monday, Andy Burnham set out his vision for government, which put devolution at the heart of an empowered Britain. Less than 24 hours later, while Sir Keir Starmer delivered his speech on defence, I was on the phone with his office, being informed that the East Midlands would be losing nearly £1 billion of investment across two major road schemes.

  

  While the RIS is a national strategy and regional mayors do not have to be consulted, it is the logic of devolution that mayors will have increasing say (and possibly control) over spending decisions in their area.

  Ward also says:

  To start putting that right — including by granting the funding for our two road schemes — only to cancel them three months later, says to regions like mine: “You do not matter.”

  Something has got garbled in the editing here but the gist of it – that it’s grossly undermining to change your mind three months after publishing a strategy that literally plans “investment” in roads – is bang on.

  I think some of Ward’s other arguments about how these two road schemes are essential to defence manufacturing are quite weak but she’s entitled to feel let down by the government that represents the same party as her and talks a good game on devolution.

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  2026.07.07

• It was a political choice

  Former transport secretary Anne Marie Trevelyan has said some interesting things about the A1 Morpeth to Ellingham dualling scheme but seems remarkably ignorant about the fact that her government shelved the scheme.

  As I have written extensively, going back to this time last year, the Tories secretly defunded the scheme under the 2021 Spending Review.

  In fact, based on a leaked report drawn up under the current government, the Newcastle Chronicle reported last June:

  Subsequently, 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.”

  Now, the same journalist is reporting comments by Trevelyan:

  … speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service Ms Trevelyan, who lost her seat to Labour in 2024, insisted she and others had fought hard for the improvements.
  
  She said: “They hated it because it didn’t meet the budget models that any road down south did. It was always hard work.
  …
  “The system was going to slow it down. We ended up spending over £60 million on all the prep work.

  “Everybody was lined up waiting for the final stage to go, and Rishi pulled the plug and called an election. The project was sitting there waiting to go, but Labour came in and scrapped it.”

  

  Trevelyan will have known that it was her government that defunded the scheme. She was transport secretary between September and October 2022, i.e. the crazy days of the Liz Truss premiership.

  During that time, Kwasi Kwarteng’s Growth Plan promised to splurge money “accelerating” infrastructure schemes, including Morpeth to Ellingham.

  But no money was formally allocated and when Rishi Sunak came in, the Growth Plan was binned.

  Trevelyan says Labour “presumably took the advice of civil servants who would always rather spend money in the south”, adding:

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  2026.07.06

• A funding cap is a very precise choice

  Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) may have escaped cuts to the Department for Transport’s capital spending on infrastructure to pay for drones, but MPs have cast doubt on whether the project can be delivered in full within a seemingly arbitrary cap on its funding.

  By way of a reminder, the project does not have actual funding, beyond around a billion for development, but the Treasury has set a hard cap of £45bn on the amount that can be spent on delivering it.

  Now the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has flagged a “clear risk” that the Department for Transport (DfT) will not be able to manage the programme its funding cap. MPs said:

  This may help affordability, but we are unclear how HM Treasury determined the cap before the entire project is designed, scoped and costed.

  

  With NPR due to be delivered in phases, the PAC said:

  The final phase of Northern Powerhouse Rail—needed for the full connectivity and benefits—is at risk if the Department cannot scope the programme within the cap or if early cost estimates prove unrealistic.

  Most people seem to think the early cost estimates will indeed prove unrealistic and the PAC adds:

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  2026.07.02

• Is “uncommitted” road safety funding under threat?

  We’ve now worked backwards to the point where the government is still not being straight about shelving road schemes in the road investment strategy (RIS 3) and is looking to cut other “uncommitted” roads funding – on safety perhaps?

  Early yesterday people were working backwards from news that National Highways had cancelled its £300m contract with Skanska to build the A46 Newark Bypass.

  As I reported, the Department for Transport, which knew very well what was going on, was referring enquiries to National Highways, on the grounds that it was a supply chain issue.

  It then emerged that the decision had come from the other end as National Highways referred me to “The Defence Investment Plan Funding explainer”, which said:

  DfT will provide savings of up to £700m from its roads funding. The Department will consult on reductions to the third Road Investment Strategy (RIS3) – including the potential cancellation of the A38 Derby Junctions and A46 Newark Bypass schemes, both of which are yet to enter contract and not as far along as other road schemes. There will be stakeholder consultations before any final decision is taken.

  Utterly gutless and inept. The Treasury doesn’t seem to realise that the A46 scheme is not “yet to enter contract”. There may not have been notice to proceed with the works but the contract was there and had to be cancelled. Maybe someone conflated “contract” with “construction”, or were they just spinning?

  

  The news that both the A38 (pictured) and A46 schemes have been shelved was welcomed by many campaigners, but went down very badly with Claire Ward, mayor of the East Midlands.

  In a statement, she described it as “totally unacceptable to me”, adding:

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  2026.07.01

• “Surely, it will be coming to the House first”

  It looks like there may be a row over the transport secretary’s plan to publish the third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy tomorrow, when Parliament is not sitting, but ministers have already been briefing the contents to the friendly media.

  Responding to an MP at transport questions this morning, Heidi Alexander advised him to look out for the strategy. The Speaker could clearly be heard to say:

  Surely it will be coming to the House first.

  His point was that this is a statutory document and needs to be put before Parliament before being published. It’s not clear what Alexander thinks she is playing at.

  In the meantime, the Guardian has the spin:

  Ministers are to launch a major push to get more children walking and cycling to school as part of a wider boost for “active travel” by the transport secretary Heidi Alexander.

  In the first significant change to active travel policy since the Boris Johnson era, thousands of new safe routes and crossings will be built around schools in England, with a target of having at least 60% of all children walk, cycle or wheel to school by 2035.

  Another pointless target that the government will make no attempt to meet and in any case Labour probably won’t be in office.

  But I’m asking, it’s an investment strategy; what will the funding be? The Guardian refers to:

  a promised total active travel spend of £4.5bn over five years

  This looks like quite a lot of money, but leaves me asking, what will the funding actually be? Or rather what accounting tricks will ministers pull to make this look like it happens.

  

  Just for an experiment, I asked Co-pilot. The short answer is:

  They will almost certainly inflate the definition of “active travel” by counting every possible pot of money that can be loosely connected to walking or cycling, even if it is not actually spent on active travel infrastructure or behaviour‑change programmes.
  
  This is a classic Treasury/DfT tactic, and it is exactly how previous governments have inflated the numbers.

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  2026.06.11

• Private LTC is a bottomless pit of public funding

  The Department for Transport (DfT) has admitted giving the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC) another £174m of public money, despite claims that the allocation in the Autumn Budget was the last, bringing total public funding for the privately funded scheme to £3.1bn.

  The Guardian reports:

  The £174m of extra cash will be used to fund public works on both sides of the tunnel and will be found from existing budgets, the Department for Transport (DfT) said.

  The extra funding was spotted by Transport Action Network (TAN), which noted the gap between the £1.48bn announced up to and including the Autumn Budget and the £1.66bn in the (March) Road Investment Strategy.

  

  The DfT also told the Guardian:

  We have committed £3.1bn to the Lower Thames Crossing to date, including £891m to complete the publicly funded works needed to unlock private investment.

  This is around £100m more than the previously estimated £3bn, which includes around £1.5bn already spent. It’s subject to rounding and was probably a bit under £3bn and is now a bit over £3.1bn.

  Becca Lush of TAN told the Guardian:

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  2026.06.08