With a price tag of £96 billion when published in November last year, the Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) certainly grabbed the headlines.
Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps declared that the plan was an “unprecedented commitment to build a world-class railway that delivers for passengers and freight, for towns and cities, for communities and businesses”.
He made it clear that the investment would benefit eight out of the top ten busiest rail corridors across the North and Midlands, providing “faster journeys, increased capacity and more frequent services, up to ten years sooner than previously planned”.
In a speech to Parliament on the day the plan was published, Shapps said that the costs for HS2 were rising and that he was concerned that newer projects such as Midlands Rail Hub and Northern Powerhouse Rail hadn’t been fully factored into the plans. Under the original scheme, he told MPs, the HS2 track would not have reached the East Midlands or the North until the early 2040s.
He added: “Clearly, a rethink was needed to make sure the project would deliver for the regions that it served as soon as possible.”
One of his key criticisms, he maintained, was that HS2 was designed in isolation from the rest of the transport network. The IRP was meant to change all that, proposing three high-speed lines. First, Crewe to Manchester. Second, Birmingham to the East Midlands, with HS2 trains continuing to central Nottingham and central Derby, Chesterfield and Sheffield on an upgraded and electrified Midland Main Line. And third, a new high-speed line from Warrington to Manchester and to the western border of Yorkshire, slashing journey times across the north of England.
But even before Shapps had delivered his speech, it was clear that some projects, including Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), weren’t going to get an easy ride.
Instead of delivering a project that Boris Johnson had committed to building (and as a result had won parliamentary seats in the North, breaking down the so-called ‘red wall’), the IRP effectively scrapped large parts of NPR, including most notably a high-speed line from Manchester to Leeds via Bradford. It then proposed a new version of the project, investing in an upgrade of the Trans-Pennine route. The scheme included additional track to increase capacity for passenger and freight services and to improve journey reliability.
The Department for Transport had previously forecast that the Trans-Pennine project would cost between £9bn and £11.5bn, and that it would be completed between 2036 and 2041. There was also criticism that of the £96bn IRP funding, at least £40bn had been previously announced.
But there was more. Earlier in the year, the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) had suggested that around £185bn was needed to deliver all of the proposed major rail schemes in the North and Midlands. The IRP budget fell well short of this target.
The lack of funding didn’t go unnoticed by seasoned rail observers. Andy Bagnall, then director general of the Rail Delivery Group, said: “Rail has a vital role to play in driving the new economy and the fair, clean recovery the country wants to see. While millions of people will benefit from this major investment in boosting connectivity between major cities in the north of England and the Midlands, leaving out key pieces of the jigsaw will inevitably hold back the ability of the railways to power the ‘Levelling Up’ agenda and the drive to net zero.”
There was further criticism from the lobbying group Greengauge 21. It stated that the IRP risked giving planning a bad name. It maintained that four projects (HS2 in its entirety, NPR, Transpennine Route Upgrade and Midlands Rail Engine, devised over a ten-year period between 2008-17) had been effectively judged by the NIC on behalf of Government to be unaffordable.
Parts of each of them ended up on the cutting-room floor, and it said the IRP comprised what was left. A statement from the group said: “In preparing the IRP, Government has taken the rare step of preparing a forward plan in the interregnum before the new post-Shapps-Williams arrangements come into force.
“The rail network is the perfect example of an interconnected system. Implementation planning requires a disciplined approach, albeit one that is capable of adapting (as the National Infrastructure Commission suggested) to shifting circumstances, but also one with a deep understanding of day-to-day operational realities.”
