Government Major Project Review

[LNW-GW Joint]

There was a burst of activity this morning about the project reviews in progress for Rishi Sunak's budgetary announcement on 17 November.
Our old friend Grant Shapps is involved as Business Secretary, but clearly knows the rail situation.
The BBC reports the debate as follows:

Sizewell C: Government denies new nuclear plant under review

A government official had told the BBC that every major project was under review.

www.bbc.co.uk

A Treasury spokesperson said delivering infrastructure projects was "a priority".
"HS2 is under way, within budget, and supporting 28,000 jobs, we are also seeking to approve at least one large-scale nuclear project in the next few years and aim to speed up the delivery of around 100 major infrastructure projects across the UK."
It would be difficult to axe Sizewell C as it was a manifesto pledge in 2019.

But the new Business Secretary, Grant Shapps, gave the clearest indication yet that recent commitments by former Prime Minister Liz Truss were very likely to be scaled back.
Ms Truss had pledged to build a major rail scheme in northern England in full, with a high-speed link eventually connecting towns and cities from Hull to Liverpool, through Bradford.
But the plans for the rail line - known as Northern Powerhouse Rail - are now expected to be reduced.
Speaking to the BBC, the business secretary said that journeys between Manchester and Leeds for example, have already been reduced to half an hour, as promised in the Conservative party's 2019 manifesto.
"There wasn't really much point in going and blasting new tunnels through the Pennines… it's not true to say we're not delivering on what we said we would do on levelling up the north," he said.

However, Henri Murison, chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership lobby group said scaling back the rail line raised "serious questions" about the government's plans to boost growth.
"The North's woeful transport infrastructure continues to weigh down our economy and hold back private investment.
"This option saves little to nothing to Treasury coffers now. Northern Powerhouse Rail is still in early development stage meaning that the vast majority of the investment needed is well beyond the current spending review period."

Ever economical with the actualité, Shapps claims Manchester-Leeds is already down to half an hour.
In fact a 30 minute Manchester-Leeds time won't be delivered until TRU is complete and a new line built between Manchester and Marsden, as proposed in Shapps' own IRP, published exactly a year ago:

page 105, 3.78
taking forward a section of new line from Manchester, which in conjunction with the upgrades to the Transpennine main line (upgraded to form NPR Phase 1) on the route towards Huddersfield, would provide the quickest and most cost-effective route to delivering close to a 30 minute Manchester-Leeds journey time

This would presumably mean "blasting a new tunnel through the Pennines".
The best time in 2019 was 49 minutes, with one stop at Huddersfield.

 

[a_c_skinner]

A new line from Manchester to Marsden is a huge project (isn't it?). What sort of journey times are practical without that?

 

[The exile]

There was a burst of activity this morning about the project reviews in progress for Rishi Sunak's budgetary announcement on 17 November.
Our old friend Grant Shapps is involved as Business Secretary, but clearly knows the rail situation.
The BBC reports the debate as follows:

Sizewell C: Government denies new nuclear plant under review

A government official had told the BBC that every major project was under review.

www.bbc.co.uk

Ever economical with the actualité, Shapps claims Manchester-Leeds is already down to half an hour.
In fact a 30 minute Manchester-Leeds time won't be delivered until TRU is complete and a new line built between Manchester and Marsden, as proposed in Shapps' own IRP, published exactly a year ago:


This would presumably mean "blasting a new tunnel through the Pennines".
The best time in 2019 was 49 minutes, with one stop at Huddersfield.

I have to say that the impression I got was that he was saying that most of the Manchester - Leeds journey time reductions would be achieved by existing projects - which (true or not) is not quite the same thing.

 

[snowball]

On the lunchtime BBC TV news it was mentioned that Sizewell C is no longer under review.

My impression is that Shapps was referring to the benefits of TRU without NPR, compared with the extra costs of NPR, but they cut off his beginning.


== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 5 Nov 2022 ==



Added later:

It is now fairly clear that NPR is now back to where it was a few months ago, as proposed in the IRP and before Truss's promises. Some discussion in the speculation forum.