The Government has delayed a long-awaited decision on whether to dual the A1 in Northumberland by another nine months.
In a move sure to provoke huge frustration among many in the North East, ministers now say that a verdict on whether or not to upgrade a 13-mile section of the key route between Morpeth and Ellingham will not be delivered until next autumn. The delay to September 5, 2023, is the third time that a decision has been pushed back on an issue that has been campaigned on for decades.
A resolution on whether to proceed with the project had been due in January of this year, but was held back until June and then again to December. After that latest deadline for a verdict passed on Monday without any announcement from the Department for Transport, news of yet another setback was confirmed to MPs on Tuesday.
In a statement in the House of Commons, transport minister Huw Merriman said: “The deadline for the decision is to be further extended to September 5, 2023 (an extension of 9 months). The reason remains as that set out in the written ministerial statement of June 6, 2022. The decision to set a new deadline is without prejudice to the decision on whether to give development consent for the above application.”
The postponement had come following the publication of Sir Peter Hendy’s Union Connectivity Review, which aired reservations about the scheme and called for a new “multimodal study” of road and other transport links between the North East and Scotland which “could result in much better outcomes than considering specific stretches of individual modes in isolation”. If approved, the scheme would involve upgrading eight miles of the A1 to dual carriageway between Morpeth and Felton, as well as a further five miles between Alnwick and Ellingham.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had promised to push ahead with the scheme during a leadership hustings in the North East this summer, as had Liz Truss. At the event in Darlington in August, Mr Sunak said: “I know it is something really important, it is something we put in our manifesto and something as Chancellor that I, in theory, signed off on the funding for. But I know recently there has been some issue and the Transport Secretary is having another look at those plans.
“I am not sure what the issue is, but as Prime Minister I can certainly commit to you that I will go and figure out quickly what the situation is because I would like to see the A1 dualled. I travel on it a lot, I travel on the A19. Not only do we need to do that, we need to figure out the Tees Crossing as well.
“Those are the type of investments that will make a real difference to connectivity in the North and you have my absolute assurance that, as a matter of urgency, I will go and find out what that thing has been slowed down and get it back on track.”
Hopes that the project would finally be completed were raised under Ms Truss's brief tenure as Prime Minister, when Berwick MP Anne-Marie Trevelyan was made transport secretary. But the project is now set to remain in limbo for months to come.
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