£50m was ‘fairytale’ money says North East Mayor

By Local Democracy Reporter, Daniel Holland.

Tens of millions of pounds worth of transport funding now cut from a Government pledge to County Durham was a “fairytale which never existed”, the North East mayor has insisted.

It emerged on Wednesday that a £72.8 million transport cash allocation earmarked for Durham County Council under Tory rule 12 months ago has now been slashed to just £23 million.

That blow comes after months of mounting concern about the state of the North East’s crumbling transport infrastructure and will, no doubt, prompt questions about the future of other vital projects like the restoration of the Tyne Bridge and removal of the Gateshead Flyover.

Labour ministers had been urged last year to honour the pledge made during Rishi Sunak’s premiership, with local leaders warning that a failure to do so would be “completely unacceptable” and “inflict significant harm on our economy”.

But the Department for Transport’s (DfT) spending has been put under a major review, with Labour saying that the Tories left behind £2.9 billion of unfunded commitments.

North East mayor Kim McGuinness defended her party on Friday over the £50 million downgrade.
She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “It is obvious the £73 million the last Conservative prime minister promised to Durham was a fairytale which never existed in the Government’s accounts because of the mess it had made of the country’s finances. I’m bringing real money to our region for transport from the new Government.”

The money was allocated to Durham as a share of the £4.7 billion Local Transport Fund (LTF) in February 2024, intended to make up it missing out on money the rest of the North East negotiated for 2025 to 2027 from the City Regional Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS) due to the county’s late decision to sign up to the regional devolution deal.

News of the funding cut adds to a series of concerns about whether the Labour Government will back the upgrading of critical infrastructure across the North East and deliver on promises to close the North-South divide.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has faced accusations recently of southern bias in her economic growth plans and the DfT has already binned plans to dual the A1 in Northumberland after deeming them “poor value for money”. 

There have been fears that upgrades of the Seaton Burn and Moor Farm roundabouts on the A19 could be under similar threat, while council bosses on Tyneside have grown increasingly exasperated about the new Government’s failure to commit to handing over a final £6 million promised towards the restoration of the Tyne Bridge and Central Motorway.

There are serious concerns about the condition of both the Swing and Redheugh bridges too, while the Gateshead Flyover had to be shut in December amid worries that it was at risk of collapse.

That 1960s structure, which previously carried 40,000 vehicles a day before its sudden closure, is set to be demolished without ever reopening.

But there remain big questions over how that will be paid for, let alone Gateshead Council’s ambitions of then mounting a major regeneration of the town centre following the flyover’s removal.

That is before even mentioning the grandest plans to radically upgrade transport infrastructure and unlock the potential of the North East economy – most notably, through a reopening of the Leamside railway line and extension of the Tyne and Wear Metro to Washington, the cost of which would likely run well over £1 billion.

Gateshead Council leader Martin Gannon told the LDRS he was “disappointed” by the funding cut to Durham this week, having warned last September that it would be “absolutely, completely unacceptable for us not to receive that funding we campaigned for and which was committed by the previous government”.

The Labour council leader, who is also the North East deputy mayor, said that he did not view the reversal as the Government “turning its back on the North East” but that local leaders “are going to continue to campaign for the best possible solution for the region”.

He added: “Whether it is CRSTS funding for County Durham, the commitment in funding to the Tyne Bridge, whether it was the A1 – there were commitments. I can wallpaper my walls with commitments from Boris Johnson that were not delivered on. 

“There were a whole series of commitments given by the previous government that were never funded. Now the new government has come in and they are having to make some difficult decisions, so I do have some sympathy with the government. 

“But our position has to be that we make our best possible case on behalf of the region – on the Tyne Bridge, the CRSTS money, the future of the flyover in Gateshead. We will continue to campaign for funding for the extension of the Metro and the opening of the Leamside Line. We will continue to make those cases and I think they are really strong compelling economic cases, where we can demonstrate that by making those investments it improves the productivity and tax yield to the country.”