‘I need 20,000 people for high speed rail plan’
Transport chief’s skilled worker worry
THE DIRECTOR of the flagship Northern Powerhouse Rail project has admitted he is more concerned about finding enough skilled workers to complete the £39bn scheme than getting funding for it from the Government.
Tim Wood, Transport for the North’s director in charge of the high speed network between the big cities of the North, said 20,000 people would be needed to deliver the scheme by the late 2030s.
And he said transport officials would need to work with northern universities and further education colleges to produce the required engineers for the projects as well as those with the digital skills required for a state-of-theart railway.
His warning at the Transport for the North conference in Sheffield came as a leading metro mayor, the Liverpool City Region’s Steve Rotheram, warned that if NPR were to start now the region wouldn’t have the skills base to deliver it.
Last week political and business leaders gave the green light to the business case for Northern Powerhouse Rail, which includes a new line between Leeds, Manchester and Bradford, being submitted to the Government.
Mr Wood said if the scheme got the go-ahead, it would mean as much as £2.5bn being spent in one year compared to the £2.9bn being spent over five years on the
trans-Pennine route upgrade. He said: “It means jobs, it means that legacy, it means working with those universities and other educational establishments and really driving this hard, and telling the contractors, boom and bust in the railway, in NPR, is over. We are all nose to the grindstone every day of the week for the next 20 years.”
But he added that in the next 15 years the railway industry will lose half its workforce to retirements or people moving on to new jobs. He said: “My biggest issue, in my mind, is not the money, it is the skills. It is about the 20,000 people I will need to build Northern Powerhouse Rail.
“Don’t forget at the same time, High Speed 2 Phase 2B in the North will also be being built, and also you will have Network Rail with what they will be doing with maintenance works, renewal works.
“That is why Transport for the North called for us to be the guiding light, to pull these programmes together and look to coclient those as we have done with Northern Powerhouse Rail.”
Separately, a delegation from Leeds travelled to Westminster yesterday to call on the Government to recognise the “incredible potential” of the regeneration plans linked to the arrival of HS2 in the city.
Council leader Judith Blake David Laws, chief executive of Leeds Bradford Airport, and Welcome to Yorkshire chief executive made the case for government investment in Leeds Station. A business case for the £500m Leeds Integrated Station Masterplan, which would turn the station into a “world-class gateway”, was submitted to the Department for Transport last year.
My biggest issue, in my mind, is not the money, it is the skills. Northern Powerhouse Rail director Tim Wood.