THE DEPARTMENT for Transport has revealed the first details of how budget cuts announced earlier today will affect its plans in the current financial year.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has unveiled plans to save £6.2 billion pounds in 2010-2011, and it now appears that rolling stock orders and Passenger Transport Executives could be among those who lose a share of the £683 million which has been cut from the DfT budget.

The DfT said its biggest cut, of £309 million, will affect local authorities. This could hit Passenger Transport Executives as well as bus, highway or other local transport schemes.

Some of the rolling stock being procured under the requirements of the High Level Output Specification also appears to be at risk. The DfT said that 'planned spend' on new trains in 2010-2011 for which contracts have not already been signed will be dropped.

Transport for London will lose £108 million, and Network Rail's budget has been pruned by £100 million. The DfT is also making ‘direct expenditure’ savings of £112 million. Further details have yet to be published.

The Department has been silent on the prospects of one major rolling stock order, the new fleet for Thameslink, which was expected to cost at least £1 billion. The decision to order the new trains had already been deferred until this autumn, but the scale of the cuts announced so far does not seem to be enough to involve such a large contract.

Some road improvements are also being cancelled.

The RMT union has pledged to fight cuts in the transport budget, and warned that the reductions announced so far were ‘the thin end of a very thick wedge’.
 

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