Shropshire Council has admitted that its controversial Shrewsbury North West Relief Road (NWRR) has a funding gap of over £100m – a deficit for which it currently has no credible funding source.
The highway authority was hoping that a £136m Local Transport Fund allocation under the previous Government’s Network North programme could be used to fill the funding gap, but that funding stream was described by the transport secretary this week as ‘fantasy money’.
Until now, Shropshire has not provided an updated cost for the scheme, which has seen the price skyrocket since an outline business case (OBC) put it at £71.4m.
It previously retracted a disclosure of a £95m funding gap, claiming it was an error.
In an interview with the BBC in October 2023, the then transport secretary, Mark Harper, said the Government would fund 100% of the NWRR, near Shrewsbury, which is categorised as a Large Local Major (LLM) scheme.
However, the Department for Transport later clarified that it was only considering paying the full cost at OBC stage and that it had only so far pledged £54m.
The scheme also incorporates a planned Oxon Link Road (OLR), for which Local Growth Fund cash was allocated.
The council’s 2024-25 to 2029-30 Capital Strategy, which was discussed at a meeting of its cabinet this week, states that the combined funding gap for the NWRR and OLR is £111.484m. This is a ‘movement’ of £99.226m compared to the previous year, which cited a figure of £12.258m.
The Medium Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) presented to the same meeting states that ‘the financial options relating to the various scenarios for the scheme will be set out in the Council version of the MTFS’.
This is a reference to a new version being produced for a meeting of the full council on 27 February. This suggests that the authority either does not have a current funding plan for the project, or it is not including it in a published document to be considered by its cabinet.
The apparent absence of a funding plan for the scheme also suggests that the authority has failed to deliver a recommendation from its own external auditors last year that it produce one ‘as a matter of urgency’.
It also calls into question a statement made by the council’s cabinet member for highways, Dan Morris, that: ‘The project was also under another Grant Thornton external audit (in response to a Shropshire Council member challenge) that required no further actions.’
A council spokesperson told Highways that Cllr Morris was making the point ‘that he had been provided with assurances from the officers managing the NWRR project that the recommendations as set out in the [auditors’] report had already been implemented’.
It now appears that the ‘further action’ of producing a formal funding plan is still ongoing.
A funding plan would require an updated estimate of the scheme’s projected costs, something that the council has said will be made public in the full business case (FBC) for the scheme, which it has repeatedly promised to publish.
It had been expected that the FBC would be discussed at the full council meeting on 27 February but Andy Wilde, assistant director for infrastructure, who is overseeing the scheme told the council's Audit Committee last week that he could not say when it would be published.
