Also responding to the TSC report, the Railway Industry Association (RIA) welcomed the call to revisit the IRP and further consider the Northern cities that were excluded from the plans. However, it’s also concerned about the time it’s taking to bring forward projects.
RIA Technical Director David Clarke says: “The issue for the supply chain is that we simply don’t know any of the detail. We can understand that it takes time for the DfT, Network Rail and others to work up their early-stage business cases, but that just illustrates what a massive change it is from the pre-IRP days.
“Before, we could see a timeline that would take projects into getting consent through Parliament and there would be design work tenders coming out. That was building confidence about the delivery stage of a project. What’s happened is that because IRP represents such a substantial change, the clock has been restarted.”
RIA’s concerns appeared to mirror worries of another group of MPs - members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Infrastructure (APPGI).
In June, the group linked up with the Institution of Civil Engineers for a consultation on how to speed up delivery of the IRP. The consultation sought workable proposals on three key areas: What are the realistic timetables for delivery on individual schemes? What measures could be taken to accelerate their delivery? What principles could be used to determine what could be added to the core pipeline of schemes in the future, and when?
APPGI Chairman Andrew Jones said: “The Integrated Rail Plan gives us a good approach to levelling up rail services and this work is about ideas to deliver it faster, and targeted to the right areas. There is so much expertise in the sector, I want to tap into it to support the Government programme.”
So, the big question is: what will happen next? Will the IRP now be reviewed and reworked? While there have been calls for that to happen and commitments to look again at NPR, Greengauge 21’s Jim Steer remains sceptical: “I don’t see any advantage for Government in producing an IRP Mk 2.”
But Steer remains concerned about what happens in the major cities: “The links between them are being planned and delivered in some cases by HS2 and in others by Network Rail, but the critical need in most of the major cities across the North and Midlands is to upgrade and expand existing city centre stations.
“Too often, this seems to be put in the ‘too difficult’ basket.
But unless these problems are tackled in Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield and elsewhere, HS2, NPR and the Transpennine
Route Upgrade simply won’t work. This would be where a further strategic view from DfT, to address these central city problems, would be most helpful.”
And there are some that maintain that the IRP isn’t actually that integrated. TfN’s Jonathan Brown says: “I wonder whether there are ways of doing things to make the network better as a whole - for example, the synergies between HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail. That’s an obvious one. At the moment, you also have different teams doing different things in the DfT and elsewhere. Then there’s everything else on rail, including investment in local services to benefit the big projects. There are short-term projects, medium-term schemes like Transpennine, and Northern Powerhouse Rail is longer term. How does it all fit together?”
And then, of course, there’s the interface with IRP and the new Great British Railways (GBR) organisation. Says Brown: “Presumably, GBR would be the sponsor body for HS2 and NPR. There are lots of possibilities, but we need to ensure that all these things fit together.”
Overall, as Haines has pointed out, the railway industry should not be seen as being ungrateful for the IPR. It’s still clearly a big investment and a vote of confidence in the railway. And let’s not forget that Government has recently spent billions of pounds supporting the railway through the COVID crisis, and continues to provide support as the slow recovery of rail patronage continues. Some schemes that faced the axe in the plan may well be resurrected, and many agree that the recommendations of the TSC are definitely a good starting point.
Quite what future lies ahead when it comes to calls for the NPR programme remains to be seen. With the cost-of-living crisis and a recession on the way, there won’t be an abundance of new money for the railways or anything else for that matter.
And on timings, as RIA has said, timescales could be slipping. For a document that was sold to the industry as a way of speeding things up, it could ironically be having the opposite effect. ■
