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.”
Speaking to RailReview, Greengauge 21 Chairman Jim Steer said more recently: “The launch of IRP was poorly handled by Government. I don’t think ministers understood the expectations that had been set over several years prior to its publication, what with the wider Northern Powerhouse economic agenda set in the Cameron/Osborne era.
“Equally, I think the key stakeholders didn’t seem to realise that the Government effectively set a budget for these schemes a year earlier through the Rail Needs Assessment, a report from the National Infrastructure Commission. But projects like NPR had been worked up without any budget, and for five or six years, schemes were being dreamed up as if there was no tomorrow.”
Steer maintains that the NIC was right to apportion a budget for improvements in the North and Midlands on a fair basis, including pro rata to population levels. He suggests it was a necessary step to getting away from using cost:benefit ratios to decide which major rail investments should proceed across the nation - a process which inexorably in the past favoured London and the South East.
But the budget-capped IRP, according to Steer, also brought a dose of reality which many simply didn’t want to hear. He adds: “The country is now going into recession. It wasn’t when IRP came out. It begs this question, unfortunately: how much is now going to be available for investment in rail?”
Also responding to criticism of the IRP, Network Rail Chief Executive Andrew Haines said back in December that those complaining had done the industry “an enormous disservice”. He maintained that the economics of the railway remained very challenging, particularly at Treasury level. He added that the rhetoric that had developed around the IRP nationally has been “profoundly unhelpful, imbalanced and wrong”.
The biggest critics were (unsurprisingly) in the North, where the plan was described by some as the “great railway betrayal”. It was seen as not only a U-turn on its transport commitments, but also a reversal of the Government’s much-publicised Levelling Up agenda.
There were also concerns about the effective scrapping of HS2’s eastern leg. Originally planned to run from Birmingham to Leeds on dedicated high-speed track, following the Oakervee Review its future was looking less and less assured. With costs rising on Phase 1 of the route, from London to Birmingham, many had expected the eastern leg to become a sort of ‘sacrificial lamb’ to reduce the overall cost of HS2.
The IRP was seen as a double-whammy blow for the North, and officials there - including Transport for the North (TfN) - were quick to condemn the IRP. Responses from councils didn’t pull any punches. A press release stated that the IRP was the “wrong solution” for the whole of the North because the plan didn’t deliver long-term transformation.
Metro mayors, council leaders and representatives of Local Enterprise Partnerships covering the whole of the North convened the TfN Board in Leeds to agree a response. Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham said: “We have always prioritised east-west connectivity across the North. That is something that unites us. I would say it is the single biggest transport challenge facing this country. It is not a sustainable situation.”
He added: “History would not look kindly on the Board if it just accepted this was all the North was going to get. We have been discussing these proposals for years and what we got was a different solution imposed on us without discussion.”
Days later, the leaders issued statutory advice to the Government, stating that the IRP in its current form was “not acceptable”. Louise Gittins, TfN chairwoman at the time, said: “Our statutory advice to Government is clear that they must think again. Instead of this top-down centralised approach, they need to reach out and work with local communities and businesses.”
She added: “Despite our deep concerns that the IRP is woefully inadequate, the TfN Board unanimously agreed that it wished to explore with Government funding options for the delivery of the preferred NPR. Options could include local contributions, including through harnessing local economic benefits. And the possible solutions suggested by TfN could help NPR move forward.”
Earlier this year, new Prime Minister Liz Truss appeared to have committed to building the NPR scheme.
Addressing a hustings meeting in Leeds, where she grew up, she made it clear that the coast-to-coast line was crucial for the future of the north of England. And speaking to the Northern Agenda newsletter, Truss said: “I want to build an aspiration nation that unleashes opportunity for all, no matter where you live or where you grow up. We need to drive growth and business investment to bring new and better jobs to the North.”
However, Truss didn’t explain how her government would pay for the new rail line, for which the most recent estimates put the final bill at more than £30bn.
In the Midlands, the IRP seemed to get a warmer reception when it was published. TfN’s counterpart, Midlands Connect, appeared to have accepted that the eastern leg of HS2 would be changed, and officials seemed more interested in the survival of their own rail upgrade plan - Midlands Rail Hub (MRH).
Costing much less than NPR, the Midlands scheme proposed a new high-speed connection between Birmingham and East Midlands Parkway, direct links onto HS2 for Derby, Nottingham and Chesterfield, and a commitment to the Midlands Rail Hub. The scheme had already been awarded £20 million in the previous budget to develop an outline business case, so there seemed little doubt that MRH would receive the green light when the IRP was published.
Commenting on the Government’s plan, Midlands Connect Chairman Sir John Peace said the announcement gave businesses and local leaders the reassurance they’d been waiting for.
“Although these plans are different in some respects to what
we’d expected, there are a lot of positives and lots of things to be excited about. Now that we have certainty, we must focus our efforts on delivery. Our challenge to Government is simple: it should move as quickly as possible to get spades in the ground and bring benefits to local people sooner.”
But what the statement from Midlands Connect didn’t say was that the IRP would have a negative impact on plans for improved east-west connectivity, especially to places such as Leicester.
Midlands Rail Hub proposes linking Birmingham’s Moor Street station into East Midlands services, which would also help to relieve pressure from the busy Birmingham New Street station.
To do that, a new eastern chord is required to connect the Moor Street lines to the Derby lines at Bordesley, just outside the city centre. The problem is that the proposed HS2 eastern leg, while delivering some of the Midlands Rail Hub outcomes in terms of east-west connectivity to Nottingham, leaves out the aspirations for better connections to places such as Leicester, as well as some of the intermediate stations such as Nuneaton, Burton and Tamworth.
Also at risk are Transport for West Midlands’ plans for new stations at Sutton Park and Castle Vale. Not only that, but the connectivity improvements promised by the revamped HS2 eastern leg, on current timescales, would have to wait until the mid-2040s. Plans for the Eastern chord could be implemented much sooner.
The IRP proposed another possible change to the HS2 eastern leg. In the document’s appendix, the Government highlighted a plan put forward by Greengauge 21 to take HS2 beyond Nottingham to Newark, to link up with the East Coast Main Line. Greengauge 21 had reviewed the eastern arm and had shown how the ability to serve Nottingham with high-speed rail could also be used as a basis for transforming the nation’s key longer-distance, inter-regional cross-country network.
Greengauge 21’s proposals would effectively turn the Y-shaped network (whose right arm was shortened by the IRP) into a more useful ‘X’ shape. Its proposals also supported a proposition for upgrading the East Coast Main Line northwards from Newark to Newcastle, and adding capacity where needed (potentially by adding new high-speed rail infrastructure in the northern part of the East Coast corridor). It maintained this was an easier proposition than the original HS2 alignment to Leeds and York.
Steer said: “The idea of upgrading Birmingham-Nottingham-Newark has been around for quite a while, but the breakthrough thought is about creating additional capacity to take some trains off the main line at Newark going south and get them into London. The ECML has bottlenecks between Newark and London.”
Now, almost a year after the IRP was published, some of the schemes contained in it may be reworked as a result of further criticism from a variety of different bodies. Back in July, both the National Audit Office (NAO) and the Transport Select Committee (TSC) waded into the IRP debate.
The NAO had conducted a detailed review of the Transpennine Route Upgrade, and for ministers it wasn’t easy reading. The NAO report concluded that it wasn’t yet clear how the upgrade’s intended benefits would be achieved. It said that the DfT had developed a clear case for investment in the Transpennine route, but has taken too long to decide how to upgrade it.
The document also suggested that negotiations between Network Rail and train operators to agree track access for construction work on the route will be difficult (which would create a risk of delays), and that there was no commitment to funding the rolling stock.
There were also questions about how the DfT and Network Rail will fund it, with sharp rises in the cost of energy and materials.
Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said: “Rail passengers in the North have contended with increasing overcrowding and delays for too long. It is good that plans for the Transpennine Route Upgrade are now agreed, but there are still significant risks to the programme’s progress that could cause further disruption. The Department for Transport, Network Rail and Government must work together to manage these challenges and deliver the expected benefits for rail users.”
The NAO also found that passengers’ awareness of the planned upgrades to the Transpennine route was low, which is a concern because of the disruption it may cause to their journeys.
In conclusion, the report stated that it was not yet clear how other government departments and local government will help deliver the programme’s benefits, and that its interface with NPR wasn’t clear enough to ensure the benefits and connections between the two projects.
Finally, the NAO said it still wasn’t clear if the programme’s design will provide long-term resilience to climate change.
If the NAO’s criticism wasn’t bad enough, there was more to come from MPs sitting on the Transport Select Committee. They had gathered evidence from a variety of different stakeholders in the rail industry, and as a result concluded that the plan should be revisited to address several issues. The TSC suggested that a thorough reassessment of the IRP was essential to ensure this “once-in-a-generation investment” in rail is not a missed opportunity to address regional imbalances.
The MPs stated: “We are concerned that the evidence base is insufficient to fully understand and substantiate its decisions.”
As a result, the committee’s report made 12 recommendations - ranging from updating the benefit:cost ratio for HS2 in the light of the changes to the eastern leg to demanding a full analysis of the wider economic impacts of the different NPR options.
The report also called on the Government to commit to the redevelopment of Leeds station, and to reconsider the case for the development of a new Bradford station.
And as part of a review of the Midlands Rail Hub, the Government should commit to an eastern chord out of Birmingham Moor Street station and publish a rail freight strategy, including a detailed assessment of how IRP will achieve greater capacity for freight.
Other recommendations centre on the Government’s “fixation” on journey time reductions overshadowing the issue of track capacity, and the need for a renewed and transparent conversation about the risks and benefits of the underground station option at Manchester Piccadilly.
The report also said that upgrading plans contained in the IRP would “bring modest benefits, but not to the transformational extent needed to end regional imbalances”.
As you can imagine, publication of the TSC report was music to the ears of Transport for the North.
“This report is a vindication of what TfN has been calling for, for some time,” said TfN Chief Executive Martin Tugwell.
“London and the South East have seen vast sums spent on HS1, the first phase of HS2, the new Elizabeth line, and the Thameslink upgrade. Meanwhile, the North’s ageing and creaking rail network has had little in the way of new infrastructure or expansion of services. And yet the North’s railway has recovered faster and stronger than the rest of the country - a sure sign of not only how important it is to our economy now, but of its potential to be the catalyst for further growth.”
TfN maintained that its plans for NPR were fully costed and have a robust evidence base to underpin them, and that they would provide a good return on their investment by allowing the North to break free of the constraints that have held back its economy for too long. TfN also welcomed calls for plans for Leeds, Bradford and Manchester to be re-examined.
However, there are still concerns about the timings of the various schemes, the scheduling of work, and the need to get shovels in the ground.
Jonathan Brown, TfN’s strategic rail lead officer, said: “The Government said at the time that they were going to do things quicker, but we are still waiting for things like the terms of reference for a study into HS2 to Leeds. It’s getting towards a year, and we are now being held up because of the change in Prime Minister. If it’s taking nearly a year to get to a point where we are told what the terms of reference are, we are clearly left wondering about the timetable for delivery.”
Brown also highlights the fact that the TSC was critical of the DfT for not doing a wider economic assessment of the impact of the IRP.
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.
