Lincolnshire councillors are outraged by the government’s decision to redirect £235 million from the scrapped northern leg of HS2 to repair roads in London.
In October, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak unveiled a £36 billion plan to revamp British transport, allocating £8.3 billion for road improvements, in the wake of the HS2 line cancellation between Birmingham and Manchester.
Yet, the decision to redirect a significant portion of these funds to road repairs in London has ignited criticism, as it appears to contradict earlier commitments to invest in transport projects in the North and Midlands.
Despite Lincolnshire’s area being more than four times that of Greater London, the Department of Transport has only pledged an additional £4,924,000 for Lincolnshire’s road network this fiscal year, with a similar amount expected in 2024/25.
But South Holland District Councillor Rob Gibson (South Holland Independent) labelled the allocation to London as “disgraceful,” especially in light of Lincolnshire County Council’s controversial withdrawal of a £27 million fund earmarked for the Spalding Western Relief Road’s southern section in May, due to funding constraints.
He added: “They’ve pulled the plug on HS2 and kept all the money in London, I don’t know how else to word it. It clearly shows how [the government] feel about the rest of the country.”
Compounding these concerns, the representative for Spalding St Paul’s ward highlighted the prolonged delay of the relief road project, now not expected to resume until 2030, and voiced apprehensions about its completion, criticising it for creating “one of the biggest cul-de-sacs” in the area.
When asked about these developments, Lincolnshire’s Executive Councillor for Transport, Richard Davies (Conservative), acknowledged and welcomed the additional funding, but pointed out that it still falls short of addressing the annual £12 million cut from the county’s road budget.
He said: “Any extra money is always welcome in our ongoing fight to keep the county’s 5,500-mile long road network operational, but the amount announced is just not enough.
“Since the start of 2022 we have been operating with a 25 per cent cut in our road maintenance funding and the local results of that have been keenly felt.
“Through a series of unprecedented measures, LCC has put in a massive effort to provide an extra £19 million to the road maintenance budget for our county in order to make up some of the shortfall, but this just can’t continue. We don’t have the reserves to do this again.”
