Why the North & Midlands probably aren't the winners from today's transport cash

It is fair to say that I wasn't a massive fan of the Government's Network North transport policy document when it was rushed out during the party conference season last year.

The cobbled-together wish list was little more than a transparent fig leaf trying to cover up the shambolic reversal of the long-standing commitment to deliver HS2 to the North. We still have no answer from the Department for Transport as to how they plan to deal with the bottleneck on rail capacity on the west coast that will get increasingly severe over the coming years. A shrug of the shoulders and hope for the best won't cut it.

But I was not entirely critical. Ultimately, the spreading of spending on a range of smaller projects across the country offers the potential to stimulate local growth for communities that might otherwise be left looking on enviously at high speed economic booms elsewhere.

But Network North was very light on detail on how this would happen. Almost as if it hadn't really been thought through at the point of publication.

Today the Government seems to want to show that it does have a plan - honest. The launch of the Local Transport Fund indicates how part of the money purportedly 'released' by the cuts to HS2 will be spent elsewhere.

The 'winners' of this money will be local authorities in the North and Midlands that are not part of so-called 'City Regions' - typically rural counties and smaller towns and cities.

￡4.7 billion has been provided over seven years, which the Government says is "at least nine times" what the councils currently receive via the Integrated Transport Block (ITB). This sounds pretty good, even if you have to account for inflation over the period. I also suspect a deeper dig might find that the ITB funds are not the only ones that are making way for this new cash.

But for local authorities starved of transport cash, this money could be transformative. That bypass or park & ride that has been sitting on the shelf for years might now actually be deliverable.

But there is a catch. And it comes precisely because the councils have been under-resourced. Stripped of funds, the capacity, capability and knowledge of most councils to deliver major schemes is limited.

As such, there is a risk that this money gets wasted on projects that fail to meet business case approval. There will be no end of consultants and procurement bodies that will only be too happy to help the councils spend their newfound money, but will they be able to get spades in the ground before the political winds change and funds get redirected elsewhere again?

The evidence isn't good. Just Look at the Levelling Up Fund, where the Government said it would spend ￡900 million last year. Actual spend? According to the DfT's own accounts it provided grants of just ￡81 million, while a further ￡250 million went via Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. So just 37 per cent of the money on the table actually went out the door, and less than 10 per cent seems to have gone to transport jobs.

Today the Government says "The Local Transport Fund will deliver a new era of transport connectivity". I hope it does. My fear is that all that it will deliver is well-lined pockets for those that know how to sweep in and snaffle much needed cash, with local communities left with little to show.