No guarantee on £125m for Valleys Lines network
THE UK Government is refusing to guarantee it will give Wales a promised £125m contribution for electrifying the Valley Lines if alternative technology is chosen.
Welsh rail infrastructure is not devolved, and in 2014 then prime minister David Cameron said the £125m would give this part of Wales the infrastructure it needs.
“I am delighted to announce today that we are going to press ahead with the electrification of the Valley Lines,” he said.
But the costs and timescales of railway electrification have risen dramatically since then.
This has led to the Welsh Government using “competitive dialogue” to take soundings from European and Asian rail experts on alternatives for the Valley Lines – potentially including new technology such as battery rolling stock. Last week a UK Government civil servant said the Department for Transport (DfT) had not yet decided if the £125m “would still be available” if an alternative to electrification were chosen.
The Welsh Government said it should not be penalised for exploiting technological developments.
The £125m is a large part of the £750m budget for the south east Wales Metro programme.
A National Assembly for Wales committee is scrutinising the procurement of the next Wales and Borders franchise. It took evidence from Stuart White, a deputy director at the DfT whose team leads on the transfer of rail franchising functions to the Welsh Government.
Hefin David AM asked: “What if the Valley Lines is just a light rail proposal. Would you still commit to funding £125m for that?”
Mr White replied: “My understanding is that as part of the competitive dialogue process, bidders are considering what their approach might be to improve services on the Cardiff Valley Lines.
“The commitment to the £125m towards electrification was indeed for that – was for electrification – because that was the clear assumption of both the Welsh Government and the UK Government at the time. If there is a proposal to change that, we would need to see that proposal from Welsh Government which we haven’t seen yet.”
He also said: “We’ve not made a decision on whether the £125m would still be available if the proposal is no longer to electrify the Cardiff Valley Lines, purely because we haven’t had any such proposal.”
Mr White added that significant funding was also planned through the Cardiff City Region Deal.
Later the committee asked Welsh infrastructure secretary Ken Skates about the £125m. Mr Skates said: “I’m not sure it relates wholly and specifically to electrification rather than the overall cost of the programme to modernise the Valleys Lines.”
Simon Jones, the Welsh Government’s transport director, said: “We might end up with some kind of hybrid solution which involves battery trains, for example.
“When this letter was written in 2014, I guess it was envisaged that we would be putting in pylons for the entire length of the Valley Lines. We may not need to do that because of the way that technology has moved on, but we shouldn’t be penalised for finding a different technological approach to delivering the same outcome.”
The funding uncertainty comes at a late stage in the preparations for the franchise, which starts in October 2018. The DfT is co-sponsoring the franchise’s procurement, which the Welsh Government is undertaking on behalf of transport secretary Chris Grayling under an “agency agreement”.
At the end of this month, the shortlisted bidders are due to receive a draft franchise specification so that they can submit outline bids. This will be a dry run for preparation of final bids, due to start in late June.