Transport Insights

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

Author

Chris Ames

Tag: mrn

  • Council road schemes and broken bridges to share £1bn

    Funding for local road enhancements and repairing thousands of “run-down bridges, decaying flyovers and worn-out tunnels” over the next four years will be equivalent to the cost of one major project on the strategic road network.

    The Department for Transport (DFT) has clarified its botched press release in June about cash for England’s road network, explaining that while the £1bn in the headline ­will not be used for the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC), it will have to cover both “local highway enhancement projects” and a new Structures Fund.

    The department will still not say how much of the £1bn is for enhancements to local roads under the Major Road Network (MRN) and Large Local Majors (LLM) funding streams and how much is for repairing dodgy structures, but it’s unlikely to do much on either front.

    The original announcement referred to “major investments to improve vital road structures”, with approximately 3,000 bridges currently unable to support the heaviest vehicles, with the package also including £590m to take forward the LTC.

    It made no reference to enhancement schemes on local roads, but was very much focused on making “vital road structures…both more resilient to extreme weather events and to the demands of modern transport”.

    In a further announcement in July, the DfT claimed in July to have “green-lit” 28 local road enhancement schemes, referring to:

    £1 billion to enhance the local road network and create a new structures fund

    As I wrote last week, roads minister Simon Lightwood told shadow transport secretary Richard Holden in a parliamentary written answer that £24bn capital funding for roads over the next four years:

    includes £1 billion for key local highway enhancement projects and a new Structures Fund for repairing run-down bridges, decaying flyovers and worn-out tunnels.

    The DfT has now confirmed that the £1bn covers the Structures Fund and enhancement schemes on local roads, with an additional £590m specifically for developing the LTC.

    It’s not clear why Lightwood thought the £1bn was something to boast about as it is the same as the estimated cost of just one of National Highways enhancement schemes – the A428 Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet.

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  • Labour makes £1bn go a long way

    It’s still unclear what budget, if any, the Department for Transport (DfT) has for the local road enhancement schemes that it “green lit” in July and the roads minister’s reply to a parliamentary question has muddied the waters.

    By way of a reminder, in August I asked the DfT under FOI what the combined or individual budgets are for Major Road Network (MRN) and Large Local Major (LLM) schemes over the period of the spending review.

    It implicitly admitted that “this information” exists, but refused to disclose it, claiming that:

    Ministers are actively considering matters that directly relate to this information, and further decisions are expected to be made in due course.

    As I have observed, the absence of a clear budget for MRN/LLM schemes leaves Labour looking like it is guilty of what it criticised the Tories for – making unfunded transport spending announcements.

    In June the DfT announced a Structures Fund (in title case) as part of a £1bn package that also included £590m for the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC).

    That same month, the 10-year infrastructure strategy said the government was “investing £1 billion to enhance the road network and create a new Structures Fund that will repair major structures like bridges, flyovers and collapsed roads”.

    That billion could include the £590m for the LTC, which is part of the overall road network, although that would involve an element of double counting as that sum is promised elsewhere in the strategy.

    But this is where it gets murky. In its July press release, the DfT said it was “providing £1 billion to enhance the local road network and create a new structures fund”.

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  • Up to its old tricks: DfT conceals local road upgrade budget

    The Department for Transport (DfT) has confirmed that there is a budget for local road upgrades in England for the next four years but has refused to say what that budget is.

    The secret fund will pay for two categories of local authority upgrade – the Major Road Network (MRN) and Large Local Majors (LLM), which previously fell under a funding stream called the National Roads Fund (NRF) that also included National Highways’ funding.

    A DfT spokesperson has effectively confirmed that the NRF no longer exists but did refer to an MRN/LLM programme.

    Using the Freedom of Information Act, I asked the DfT what the individual or combined budgets were for the MRN and LLMs for the period covered by the Spending Review, which is up to and including 2029-30. It implicitly confirmed that this information exists by explicitly refusing to provide it.

    The DfT may be following a tried and tested PR strategy of announcing a large headline figure and then the smaller allocations within that – effectively re-announcing the same cash as it did this week. But it may be that the total budget is never stated.

    The DfT previously told me that the MRN/LLM funding falls under the £24bn capital funding for strategic and local roads up to 2030 that was announced in the spending review, with further announcements “in due course”.

    The government has since announced that the third Road Investment Strategy (RIS 3) will get nearly £25bn up to 2031. A large proportion of this will come from the £24bn, although not all of the cash for the RIS will be capital funding. Nearly 70% of the “interim settlement” of £4.8bn for the current year is capital.

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  • Labour copies Tories with unfunded scheme pledges

    I have had confirmation from the Department for Transport (DfT) that the Major Road Network (MRN) and Large Local Majors (LLM) are still a “programme” to fund local road upgrades but the DfT remains reluctant to be straight about how much is in the funding pot, perhaps because it isn’t very much or perhaps because it wants to makes its own re-announcement.

    As I have written before Labour ministers previously made a fake announcement about a “green light” for 28 local road upgrades of which only two were newly approved, 10 were in construction and 16 awaiting business cases and therefore dependent on how much money the DfT has to pay its share or their costs.

    In response to a question about how much money is in the combined or individual MRN and LLM budgets, the DfT told me:

    The Spending Review committed a total of £24bn of capital funding for road schemes in England over the period from 2026/27 to 2029/30, which will cover both strategic and local roads. The MRN/LLM programme is a part of that figure, and further details of this and other programmes that make up the £24bn total will be provided in due course.

    It didn’t even say that it will reveal the budget for the MRN/LLM programme “in due course”, just that it will provide “further details”.

    Labour ministers have been very critical of the previous government for announcing schemes that do not have funding but seem happy to do the same.

    I have reminded the DfT that my request for information is covered by the Freedom of Information Act.

  • There was never enough money

    New Civil Engineer reports that City of York Council has agreed to phase the delivery of its Outer Ring Road project as the anticipated cost has jumped by almost £100m to £164m.

    This has been on the cards for some time and in February Cllr Katie Lomas, the council’s finance executive member, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that:

    it’s been clear for some time there was never enough money allocated to deliver it.

    On that basis, it’s worth recapping the history of the scheme, going back to 2018, when Tory transport secretary Chris “failing” Grayling announced that it would be one of the first schemes in the major road network, although his department had not yet revealed the actual network.

    The huge rise in the cost of the scheme – and therefore the huge funding gap – has been known about for a while, leading to the decision to phase delivery of the scheme and the scheme. I’ve written a few times that government funding for these schemes leaves councils well short of what they cost these days.

    But the fact that the council was still working on the full business case for the scheme  didn’t stop the Department for Transport claiming earlier this month that it was one of 28 local road schemes that had been “given the green light“.

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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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  • 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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  • 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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