Transport Insights

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

Author

Chris Ames

Tag: funding

  • 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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  • Throwing random numbers at the problem

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

    The Department for Transport announcement about a “green light for over 50 road and rail upgrades” has a lot of random numbers and very little detail but cannot disguise the fact that Labour is throwing a lot of money at road schemes in a climate emergency, with very little for rail.

    One number that isn’t in the press release is the £1.5bn cost of the A66 Northern Trans-Pennine, which I wrote about yesterday, and which dwarfs the “£27 million to reinstate passenger rail services between Portishead and Bristol city centre”.

    Neither is the benefit cost ratio of 0.9 for the A66 scheme, representing poor value for money.

    And it is unclear how much funding the government is giving the Midlands Rail Hub, other than that it is “significant”.

    Among some obviously made-up numbers about road and rail schemes supporting tens of thousands of new jobs and new homes, there seems to be quite a sleight of hand over the number of road schemes that have actually been given the green light.

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  • Shropshire bows to the inevitable over unfunded £215m road scheme

    Shropshire Council has shelved the £215m Shrewsbury North West Relief Road (NWRR) after the Department for Transport (DfT) made clear that it will not put up any money beyond the £54m originally pledged.

    The council, which is now run by the Liberal Democrats, said leader Heather Kidd and deputy leader Alex Wagner met DfT officers earlier this week to “discuss the scheme, seek clarity about funding and explore options with regards to its future”:

    During the meeting officers from the DfT confirmed that they would not award any more money than had been originally allocated to the project. Furthermore, the Local Transport Fund of £136.4m, originally mooted by the previous administration to fund the scheme, has been replaced with a Local Transport Grant totalling only £48m.

    However, they also confirmed that the council would need to cancel work on the road before a formal discussion could proceed with Roads Minister Lilian Greenwood MP, the Department for Transport and other parts of central government about the £39m it has already spent on the scheme.

    The council said it had “paused all work” on the scheme but Cllr Kidd said the council had no choice but to cancel it, faced with a funding gap of over £176m:

    “Through our conversations with the Department for Transport, it was made very clear that no more funding would be allocated to the scheme. This makes it simply unaffordable.

    “As you can imagine, there are many implications for cancelling the road however we really have no choice.”

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  • Detail to follow

    The Treasury has now published its press release on a £1 billion Structures Fund that it says “will inject cash into repairing run down bridges, decaying flyovers and worn out tunnels across Britain, and ensure other transport infrastructure is both more resilient to extreme weather events and to the demands of modern transport”.

    Most of this £1bn – £590m – will go on the Lower Thames Crossing.

    The cash is part of the forthcoming 10-year infrastructure strategy but the press release said the cash “today” will “address these immediate risks over the next five years”.

    It added:

    “We will set out more detail about how funding will be allocated shortly. This funding is additional to the funding local authorities will receive for highways maintenance, which will be set out in due course.”

    This is an entirely meaningless statement, beyond the “shortly” and “in due course”. It appears to imply that the cash will be allocated to English highway authorities, but how can it be additional to funding that hasn’t been announced yet? It literally is funding for highways maintenance.

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