Funding to unlock £64m homes and transport plans for district

APPROVAL IS being sought for £3.5m to take forward Calderdale transport and homes schemes ultimately totalling about £64m.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority’s West Yorkshire and York Investment Committee, which meets at Wellington House, Leeds, is being asked to approve the cash on Wednesday.

The projects range from key highways improvements to the A58 and A646 to the Halifax Station Gateway scheme, and also include the homes scheme at Beech Hill, Halifax.

The committee is being asked to approve £706,665 funding towards improving the A58/A672 corridor between Halifax and the M62’s junction 22 via Sowerby Bridge, Ripponden and Rishworth.

This will include improvements to the highway and also for “active travellers” – cyclists and walkers – and could ultimately cost about £6m which would all be funded by the combined authority.

Members will also be asked to approve £594,581 to progress a scheme to improve the A646/ A6033 corridor through the Calder Valley which will eventually cost about £5m which will also be funded by the authority. Both these highways schemes will then have full business cases prepared.

The committee will be asked to approve £1.4m towards the cost of progressing the Beech Hill scheme, which will provide more than 100 new homes, of which half will be affordable, and is expected to create more than 100 new jobs in the process.

As well as Calderdale Council, other funding towards this scheme, which will cost £21.8m, will come from Homes England and the Together Housing Association. The authority itself will have provided about £2.1m towards the delivery of the scheme.

To progress the Halifax Station Gateway scheme, which will transform the station, they are being asked to find £793,000 when taken through to the final business case with costs, coming in at £28.2m of which £10.6m is expected to come from the authority.

Finally, the committee is also being asked to progress a scheme to deliver 6km of high-quality cycle way linking Todmorden and Hebden Bridge to full business case with final costs stage and is expected to cost about £1.5m, of which the authority will have to find all but £100,000 or so, but no funding is sought at this point.

It follows news last week that a succession of schemes to improve roads, rail and public services worth more than £100m across West Yorkshire have been given the go-ahead as political leaders heralded the move as vital for the region’s economy.

The West Yorkshire Combined Authority had its annual meeting last week, where it approved numerous projects worth a total of about £130m.

Among the initiatives were grants to help revamp Leeds Rail Station, improve bus infrastructure and enhancing road links to Leeds Bradford Airport.

The funding comes via a £335m Growth Deal investment which has been committed by the Leeds City Region Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and West Yorkshire Combined Authority since 2015.

One of the schemes was a plan to fund further work into its Leeds Integrated Station Masterplan.