Transport campaigners have expressed their dismay after Chancellor Rachel Reeves told MPs that the £500 million Restoring Your Railway fund had been cancelled, as part of a wide range of national economies to deal with an ‘overspend’ in the national budget of £22 billion. The decision puts projects to reopen lines and stations at risk in many parts of England, from the south west to the north east.
Ms Reeves told the House of Commons that the railway fund is one of many budgets which had not been costed by the previous government, and that she was seeking savings in transport spending which will also involve the cancellation of road schemes, including a controversial tunnel near Stonehenge.
She explained: ‘The spending audit has revealed nearly £800 million of unfunded transport projects that have been committed next year,’ and she said transport secretary Louise Haigh will ‘cancel projects in the “Restoring our Railways” programme which have not yet commenced’, saving £76 million in the coming year. However, projects will then be reviewed individually, and could still go ahead.
So far, only the reopening of the Dartmoor Line to Okehampton in Devon has been completed using money from the RYR fund, but restoration of the Northumberland Line between Ashington and Newcastle-upon-Tyne is at an advanced stage and the line is set to reopen ‘this summer’.
Another project which is under way is the Mid Cornwall Metro linking Newquay, Truro and Falmouth, and engineering consultancy Aecom was commissioned in March to launch work on the detailed design. However, the £56.8 million budget for the Cornwall scheme includes almost £50 million from the Levelling Up Fund rather than Restoring Your Railway, and it is not affected by the Chancellor’s cuts, according to St Austell and Newquay MP Noah Law.
Schemes which are set to be delayed until they can be reviewed again include the Barrow Hill line between Sheffield and Chesterfield, the Ivanhoe Line between Leicester and Burton-on-Trent, and the lines to Portishead in Bristol and Fleetwood in Lancashire, as well as stations at Meir in Staffordshire, Haxby in Yorkshire, Cullompton in Devon, Wellington in Somerset, Devizes in Wiltshire, Ferryhill in County Durham, and Aldridge near Walsall in the West Midlands.
Ben Curtis from the Campaign for Better Transport said: ‘This is a hugely disappointing decision. Rail is one of the greenest forms of transport and crucial to the economy. Growing the rail network is vital to economic growth and reducing carbon emissions. The Restoring Your Railways Fund was key to getting much-needed lines and stations reopened like the reopened Okehampton station, creating an additional 550,000 journeys in just the first two years of operation. We urge the Government to reconsider.’
Railway Industry Association chief executive Darren Caplan said: ‘We support the need for a strategic review of transport schemes, and urge the government to make sure that the spending review takes account of the crucial role rail investment plays in supporting jobs, local growth, connectivity and decarbonisation within and between the UK’s nations and regions. As the National Infrastructure Commission recently noted, a lack of rail capacity is at risk of holding back growth in key cities.’