Ministers have insisted that the reopening of the Leamside Line will come down to the new North East mayor – but there are major questions over how it could be funded.
The plan to restore the mothballed railway line was the subject of widespread anger on Thursday, after the Government pulled a pledge to deliver it only 24 hours after it had been listed among the projects to be funded under Rishi Sunak’s Network North programme.
Labour branded the U-turn a “betrayal” of the North East, while the Department for Transport now says that the Leamside renewal “could” be part-funded by a £1.8bn regional funding pot that has been significantly increased using money that would have gone to the axed northern leg of HS2.
An extra £685m that would have been spent on HS2 will top up the North East’s next share of the City Regional Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS), covering the years 2027 to 2032.
However, there is significant doubt over whether that money would be sufficient to deliver Leamside as well as various other major transport upgrades across the region – with a full regeneration of the mothballed railway line expected to cost more than £1bn.
Independent Jamie Driscoll and Labour’s Kim McGuinness, the two declared candidates for 2024’s historic North East mayoral election, have both backed the project but cautioned about its final price tag.
Restoring the disused train route, which runs from Pelaw in Gateshead to Tursdale in County Durham, has been a key ambition of local leaders for many years.
It would allow for an extension of the Tyne and Wear Metro to Washington and also free up capacity for more services on the East Coast Main Line, by providing an alternative path for freight trains.
On Wednesday, the Government published a bullet point list of North East projects included in Network North online, which stated: “The Leamside Line, closed in 1964, will also be reopened.”
That web page was subsequently taken down and the Leamside commitment was notably absent from a 40-page Government policy document, but the list has now re-emerged with a new mention of the Leamside Line – now saying that the £1.8bn CRSTS settlement “could part fund” its restoration.
Image: UK Government
Roads minister Richard Holden said on the BBC’s Question Time that it was “right” to hand control of the Leamside decision to a North East mayor, who is due to be elected next May after the agreement of a new devolution deal for the region.
Mr Holden, the MP for North West Durham, said: “We don’t know whether the local mayor is going to want to do the entire project as heavy rail if they want to go ahead, or if they will want to do part of it as a Metro extension for the Tyne and Wear Metro, or if they will do it as a mixture of different projects.
“I think it is right when we are doing devolution, if we are going to give that money – and we are basically trebling the money for the next five year period for the CRSTS funding [compared to £563m from 2022 to 2027] – that we give that decision-making power to the local mayor.”
Image: UK Parliament
Rail minister Huw Merriman told Sky News that it was “right that we actually listen and talk to the region about where they want to allocate that money”. He added that the Leamside Line “would be a very popular choice, but we do actually want them to make the ultimate decision”.
Ms McGuinness, Labour’s North East mayoral candidate, pledged to “ensure we expand the Metro system and reopen the Leamside Line” – but said: “Reopening the Leamside Line in full is going to cost at least £1bn. Expanding the Metro through Washington with a reopened Leamside Line is at least £745m. Before we even get to that we need £500m to save the Metro signalling system or the network will fail in 2030.”
Ms McGuinness, currently the Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner, added: “I’ll work with our council leaders to invest in Metro and Leamside, and lobby for a real funding settlement. The Government saved £36bn [from HS2], we deserve more than the £700m we were offered.”
Her political rival Mr Driscoll, who dramatically quit the Labour Party this summer, proposed levering money from pension funds to fully fund the Leamside restoration.
He said: “The current estimate to fully re-open the Leamside Line is £1.2bn. I will go to Treasury, like I did to get us the devolved transport money, and propose a deal. We put some in, they put a large amount in, and we lever some in from pension funds.
“It’s about us taking control and not waiting 20 years for Westminster to do something. I’ve already been having these conversations, and people are interested. But until a proper engineering study has been done we won’t know the final costs – let’s not make the mistakes of HS2.”
