Over the last few weeks government has been in overdrive. On 11th June it released the long-awaited Spending Review, followed on the 19th June by the 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy and finally on 23rd June the UK’s modern Industrial Strategy. All three plans interlink, with the Spending Review acting as the government’s wallet and the two other strategies identifying where and how the money will be spent.
Don’t worry this isn’t going to turn into a shopping list of what has been announced.
In fact it is more about what hasn’t been announced and one project in particular, though it may still come to fruition but in a mildly nostalgic way.
At the end of May there was an intense campaign to ensure the Liverpool-Manchester Railway (LMR) landed in the Spending Review with a promise from government to continue funding to further develop the route. As a brief recap, this scheme is around a brand new high capacity line from Manchester to Liverpool (and the opposite direction!) starting at a brand new underground station at Piccadilly, via stops at the Airport, Warrington Bank Quay, and Mersey Gateway before arriving in the centre of Liverpool. Some of the legal groundwork even stems from the old HS2 legislation with part of the route already protected.
The potential economic ripple effects - jobs, nationwide growth, and a massive boost to the construction sector - are immense. And yet… silence. LMR was missing from all three documents. Sadly, this omission feels far too familiar for those areas like the north of England where infrastructure ambitions often feel like empty promises.
However, there was a glimmer: a recurring line across all three documents hinted that “The Government will set out plans to take forward its further ambitions on Northern Powerhouse Rail in the coming weeks.”
Northern Powerhouse Rail – to quote Obi Wan Kenobi ‘..that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time.’
A decade ago, NPR was the north’s flagship vision: a new high-capacity, high-speed line connecting the region’s economic hubs from Liverpool through to Hull. In one of Boris Johnson’s first speeches as PM, here in Manchester, he gave his assurance that it would be built.
But as many feared, it was scaled back in 2021 under the Integrated Rail Plan. What remains today is the Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) - welcome, yes, with its electrification, track upgrades and realignments. But let’s be honest: it’s not NPR.
Liverpool-Manchester Railway is a glimpse of what NPR was and must be again. But here we are over a decade on from NPR and not a single bit of anything has been built.
Still, it seems Northern Powerhouse Rail is now officially back in the government’s vocabulary. Welcome back, old friend. You’ve been missed though probably more as a conceptual ambition rather than anything tangible.
Hopefully “in the coming weeks” we’ll find out more about what government’s plans are and whether its NPR, LMR or some other three letter acronym there’s little doubt it won’t happen overnight.
So, with a healthy dose of nostalgia it’s only right and fitting if I borrowed and slightly reworked a few lines from The Smiths’ How Soon is Now? Which should probably become the anthem for all those with any sort of ambition for growth in the north, especially involving infrastructure and the ongoing wait, delays and let-downs:
“When you say it’s gonna happen in the coming weeks - well, when exactly do you mean?
I’ve already waited too long, and all my hope is gone.”
Morrissey probably didn’t have rail infrastructure in mind - but the sentiment, unfortunately, feels oddly familiar. We know these things take time but people want something more than promises being dangled in front of them.