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By ROB PARSONS - June 30 2022
Remember back in October when Transport Secretary Grant Shapps announced a contest to host the new HQ for Great British Railways, a site he said would "take pride of place at the heart of a new era for Britain’s railways"?
The competition was officially launched with great fanfare (and the help of noted rail buff Michael Portillo) in February but since then things have gone rather quiet.
The 42 applicants - including a number of frontrunners from the North like York, Doncaster, Crewe and Stockton-on-Tees - were told a shortlist would be announced in May, which was pushed back to early June and then updated on the Department for Transport (DfT) website to the rather more vague "summer 2022".
The bidding areas have invested significant resources in developing their bids and preparing for a "public vote" to choose the eventual winner. But with no clarity about when this will be, they're struggling to plan amid the many other challenges local authorities face.
It's understood that the shortlisting by the DfT should be happening "imminently" and possibly as soon as next week. The recent national rail strikes were blamed for the delay though these were not announced until June 7.
Great British Railways is the new overarching body that will administer the infrastructure and running of much of the UK network from 2023. Though there will be a public vote the Government retains an executive power of decision before it reveals the winner.
Dr Nicola Headlam, Chief Economist and Head of Public Sector at Manchester-headquartered business intelligence firm, Red Flag Alert, said: “42 towns and cities across the country have invested time and energy in developing bids and gearing up for a X-Factor style public vote on where will get to host Great British Railways, but the Government itself seems to have lost interest."
The Government's former Head of Northern Powerhouse added: “The Department for Transport has published the criteria on which it will base its Great British Railways HQ decision and levelling up is at the heart of this.
"True levelling up would mean looking at the data and taking an evidence-based view on where this new HQ would have the biggest positive impact in line with the published criteria, rather than forcing hard-pressed local authorities into another beauty contest for funding at a time when they are supporting their communities through the worst cost of living crisis in generations and the continued economic fallout from Covid-19.”
In other beauty pageant news, the Financial Times revealed last night that the Government’s flagship £4.8bn Levelling Up Fund has suffered an embarrassing delay with the web portal for applications remaining inaccessible more than a month after it was scheduled to go live.
Local authorities bidding for the second round of the fund, the centrepiece of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s pledge to reduce regional inequalities, were supposed to have been able to lodge their applications from May 31 ahead of a deadline for submissions of midday on July 6.
But with less than a week to go until the deadline expires, applicants are still greeted with a message on the levelling up department’s website that says: “Unfortunately, it has not been possible to launch the online portal on the planned date.”
Levelling Up secretary Michael Gove has now extended the deadline to avoid a crash when the portal does go live, with bidders promised two weeks to post their submissions.
Expect to hear more on this today at the What's next for levelling up in Greater Manchester? in-person event organised by the University of Manchester at the Alliance Manchester Business School.
Big-hitting guests include Rachel Wolf, a Founding Partner at Public First who helped write the 2019 Tory manifesto and Andy Westwood, Professor of Government Practice at the University of Manchester.
Mayor blasts 'biggest and most damaging bus cuts in a generation'
With cuts to routes across the region compounded by strike action in some areas, it's a tough time to be a bus passenger in the North at the moment. And after cuts in the North East and West Yorkshire, this week brought news of more services being slashed on Merseyside and South Yorkshire.
In the Liverpool City Region, dozens of changes have been proposed, including a number of reductions to services into Liverpool city centre on weekends, two services being withdrawn in St Helens and some routes between Knowsley and Liverpool being changed.
Mayor Steve Rotheram says the cuts show why a change is needed as he attempts to follow Greater Manchester by taking local services into public control.
In South Yorkshire, as Local Democracy Reporter George Torr writes, a devastating plan by bus companies to slash services by a third has sparked anger from politicians, business leaders and unions.
Sheffield and Rotherham will start to see reductions as soon as July 24 and more cuts are expected when the Government-issued Covid-19 grants end in October. A tender process, which took place this week, listed a number of services in Sheffield and Rotherham being partially or axed completely.
South Yorkshire mayor Oliver Coppard said he was furious about the decision and blamed central government for facilitating the ‘biggest and most damaging cuts for a generation’.
The cuts are being noticed at Westminster too, as Westminster Editor Dan O'Donoghue reports.
Sheffield MP and Labour Shadow Transport Secretary Louise Haigh told the Commons this morning that "there will be four buses across the whole of South Yorkshire after 10pm". She added: "That's four buses for 1.3 million people. This isn't levelling up, is it? This is managed decline."
Responding, Transport Minister Trudy Harrison said the Government has "made available over 2 billion pounds of support to date through emergency and recovery grants since March 2020 to mitigate the impact of the pandemic for bus and light rail services".
She added: "These measures are in addition to the £200m provided annually directly to commercial operators to keep the fares down and to run an extensive network."
Greater Manchester wants to ban non-local taxis to keep air clean
In Greater Manchester, the latest salvo has been fired in the ongoing row between local leaders and government over how best to introduce a Clean Air Zone (CAZ) to tackle pollution.
After the widely-criticised region-wide charging zone for polluting vehicles was ditched this year, Environment Secretary George Eustice wrote to leaders suggesting it be reduced in size to cover just the city centre.
Greater Manchester’s response is to come up with a new plan, published yesterday. Due to be submitted to the Government next month, it lays out the case for a scheme which incentivises drivers to buy cleaner vehicles, thereby removing the need for any charging and also excludes van drivers from the proposal.
As Local Democracy Reporter Joseph Timan writes, another element of the plans is that taxis which are not licensed locally should be banned in Greater Manchester as this could help councils keep the air clean.
Currently, cabs which are licensed elsewhere can be booked by customers in Greater Manchester even if they do not meet the standards of local councils.
Meanwhile, Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has called on Home Secretary Priti Patel to step in and deport three members of Rochdale's infamous sex grooming gang.
He spoke out after it emerged that one member of the gang had swerved deportation and two others were still fighting to remain after renouncing their Pakistan citizenship.
On Monday, it emerged Abdul Aziz, 51, referred to by the gang as Master Aziz, was told by the Home Office that despite losing an appeal depriving him of UK citizenship in 2018 he would not in fact lose his citizenship and was allowed to remain in the UK.
As John Scheerhout reports for the Manchester Evening News, the father of one of the girls to be abused by the gang - the prosecution's main witness in the 2012 trial which ended with nine men being convicted - has slammed the decision to allow Aziz to remain.
Mayor Burnham and his deputy Beverley Hughes said in a statement: "Victims have been forgotten in all this and we are appalled that the Home Secretary, who has had years to do right by them, has so far failed to deport."
'Trailblazing' Rugby League World Cup 'brings millions to North'
Culture secretary Nadine Dorries this morning hailed the social impact of the 2021 Rugby League World Cup before a ball has been kicked, describing it as trailblazing in both its inception and delivery.
Liverpool-born Dorries, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, was speaking in St Helens at the unveiling of the findings of a report which claims the tournament’s social impact programme is responsible for more than £25million worth of positive change in communities across the North.
The report, carried out by London-based The Sports Consultancy and Substance who were appointed in 2019 by RLWC2021 to undertake an evaluation of the impact of the tournament, highlights the success in tackling inequalities in deprived areas.
It is claimed the tournament, which kicks off in Newcastle on October 15 and will be held in venues across the North, has helped turn an initial investment of £635,000 into a total of £25.8m, with the effect of improving physical and mental fitness, strengthening communities, boosting the local economy and growing the game internationally.
Sheffield council chief 'told to keep her role in Partygate a secret'
She's been on paid leave since January, when it emerged that she held a boozy lockdown-breaking leaving do in December 2020 as she was departing her previous role as head of the Government’s Covid taskforce.
And as it was announced that she'll be returning to her job as Sheffield City Council chief executive, Kate Josephs admitted she failed to tell local authority colleagues and the public about her involvement in Partygate after she was told to keep the matter secret by the Cabinet Office.
A cross-party council committee has now determined she should keep her job after Ms Josephs was put on discretionary paid leave from the £190,000-per-year role while the investigation took place.
But she was given a written warning over an “error of judgement” in not informing colleagues sooner about her direct involvement, which ultimately resulted in her being fined by police, as Chris Burn reports for The Yorkshire Post.
Prior to the January publication of the story about her leaving party, local media had been asking questions about Ms Josephs’ potential involvement in Partygate, but the claims were denied.
She told Local Democracy Reporter Molly Williams last night that she will donate a percentage of her £200,000 salary - which she says will be at least as much as she has been paid while she was off - to a good cause in a bid to rebuild trust.
Homophobic letter to village post office sparks mass gathering
Hundreds of villagers have flocked to their local post office in Lancashire in a show of support after the owners received homophobic hate mail.
Nathan Jones and Daniel Cooper run the post office on Station Road in New Longton, near Preston, and celebrated Pride month 2022, by raising a rainbow flag outside the building. Days later, they were sent a letter which stated: "Get that revolting flag down. This is a Christian village (3 churches) and children pass by. What kind of morons are you???".
In response, hundreds of New Longton residents donned in bright colours and rainbow flags gathered outside the post office this week. More than 200 locals braved the rain and windy conditions where they stood together for a picture that "spoke volumes".
As Fatima Aziz reports for LancsLive, the event was co-organised by one local, Sarah, who also runs the New Longton & Whitestake community Facebook page. "People hoped that whoever had taken the time to write such nasty words, either drove past and saw the outpouring of support or was aware by seeing it on social media and hopefully understood that their views were very unwelcome," she said.
No point in having inquiry into miners' strike, says Tory Minister
The Government should launch a public inquiry into the 1984-85 miners’ strike if it wants to hold on to “red wall” seats in the North, Ministers have been told.
Labour MP for Pontypridd Alex Davies-Jones suggested the Government “would be wise to pay attention” to calls for an inquiry if it wants former Labour industrial heartlands to stick with the Conservatives in future.
SNP MP for Midlothian Owen Thompson led calls for an inquiry into the actions taken to police the strike, telling a Westminster Hall debate last night that ex-miners “deserve the chance to feel listened to”.
In 2015, then-Home Secretary Theresa May reportedly considered launching an inquiry into the violent clash between miners and South Yorkshire Police on June 18, 1984 known as the Battle of Orgreave. But in 2016 her successor in the role, Amber Rudd, rejected the inquiry.
Pontypridd MP Ms Davies-Jones told a Westminster Hall debate that the “groundwork” for an inquiry had already been done, adding: “What happened at Orgreave and in the years that followed was a serious failure of policing. Only a public inquiry can right this fundamental wrong.”
But Home Office minister Kit Malthouse said: “Given the landscape has changed so markedly it is difficult to see how a review of the events and practices of more than three decades ago would yield significant lessons for the policing system today."
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Northern Stories
Cheshire canal closures have been put in place as a result of the region's water supplies dropping to 'historically low levels'. The Canal and River Trust says it has taken the 'difficult decision' to temporarily close locks, restricting navigation on the Peak Forest and Macclesfield canals from June 24. This is due to a combination of essential reservoir repairs and a dry spring leading to low water supplies in the North West.
The last council-run nursery in Bolton will close later this summer after it was deemed ‘financially unviable’. Harvey Nursery in Great Lever will close at the end of this academic year after a campaign to save it over a number of years ended in failure. Bolton’s Conservative controlled council said the local-authority-run nursery costs council tax payers in excess of £100,000 a year and was projected to operate at just 25% capacity by September.
The region’s political and business leaders will meet at the Transport for the North (TfN) board meeting at 2.30pm today, with rail performance and HS2 among items on the agenda. Board members will discuss the strategic body's vision for the year ahead at the meeting, streamed live on TfN’s website. The meeting is at the Crown Hotel in Harrogate, where the Local Government Association annual conference is taking place.
A change-of-use application that would see the former Barrow Labour Party office become a seven-bedroom house has been submitted to the borough council. The branch is currently in the process of moving out of its 22 Hartington Street site and JMP Northwest says the proposal for the building would secure its ‘suitable and viable re-use’. Barrow and Furness Constituency Labour Party is moving to the former BBC Radio Cumbria studios, also in Hartington Street.
Another senior figure is set to depart Newcastle City Council, after it was confirmed that the city’s top transport official is leaving his post for a top government job. Graham Grant, the city council’s assistant director for transport, is due to exit the civic centre this autumn to become the new director of planning and development for Active Travel England. It is the latest in a string of high-profile changes at the local authority over recent months, including former chief executive Pat Ritchie and leader Nick Forbes.
More than 400 illegally-placed election posters were removed during this month's Wakefield by-election. The figures were revealed during Wakefield Question Time, where residents get the opportunity to put questions to the council’s key decision makers live on Facebook. One resident asked: “Now the election is over, are all the parties going to go around Wakefield and remove all the endless posters on every lamppost as it makes the city look a mess.”
