With attention focused on tax cuts, Jeremy Hunt said almost nothing about transport spending in his Budget speech, while Treasury documents suggest a watering down of commitments to local roads.
The official Budget document confirmed a cut in the Department for Transport’s (DfT) resource spending from £8.2bn this year to £5.7bn in 2024-25.
This is despite a wider 1% rise in real terms for public spending next year.
The document also repeated the plans to redirect savings from the cancellation of HS2 Phase 2 through the Network North programme, including confirming £4.7bn recently announced for ‘places outside city regions in the North and Midlands’.
It stated: ‘This is in addition to the £8.3 billion the government has announced it will be investing in local roads over the next 11 years to fill millions of potholes and resurface roads, repair bridges, and deliver vital local road upgrades across England.’
The DfT has previously described this cash as ‘additional’ but has not explicitly stated what core level of funding it is additional to. It is now unclear whether there will be any extra money for councils beyond 2025.
The Government previously said the £8.3bn was for resurfacing, 'enough to resurface over 5,000 miles of road across the country over the next 11 years', with a further £4bn of HS2 cash for road upgrades, but has now described the cash as covering ‘local road upgrades’.
The Treasury re-iterated that the Government is committed to delivering a privately financed HS2 Euston station and claimed ‘productive engagement’ with local leaders to take forward £12bn to enable Northern Powerhouse Rail.
It added that it was giving the green light to the next section of East West Rail, although it clarified that this meant bringing forward works on the Bletchley to Bedford section, supported by £240m from existing budgets.
The Treasury said the Government is also upgrading the timetable on the East Coast mainline from December 2024, ‘delivering the benefits from £4 billion of government investment by providing faster and more frequent services between London and Yorkshire, Newcastle, and Edinburgh'.
The Budget set out what the Treasury called an ‘ambitious plan’ to grow the economy of Cambridge and deliver new homes by 2050, as well as confirming that the future development corporation in Cambridge will receive a long-term funding settlement at the next Spending Review, likely to include cash for transport.
The Treasury said the Government is providing an additional £7.2m to ‘unlock’ improvements to local transport connections between the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and the city, and making £3m available for Cambridge University NHS Trust to support plans for growth.
