‘No cash’ for new Black Country Metro scheme
AMAJOR extension to the Midland Metro tram line in the Black Country is unlikely to happen in full as council chiefs revealed they simply do not have the cash.
Chair of West Midlands Combined Authority Transport sub-committee and Birmingham City Council leader and Ian Ward revealed the Dudley to Brierley Hill extension will not go ahead as he warned there will likely to be more cuts to transport.
However, the first part of the line from Wednesbury to Dudley town centre is currently still being built and should open in 2024.
Cllr Ward described the situation as “a little bit of a grim picture”.
Cuts could come to assisted travel which accounts for a fifth of public transport in the West Midlands budget.
Cllr Ward said: “I don’t mislead myself that any of those decisions will be easy, they will be very, very tough decisions if we are to take any of them at all.”
Dudley councillor Cathryn Bayton, who chaired a Q&A with Cllr Ward, asked Mr Ward: “Whilst the Combined Authority has ambition in lots of areas including transport, if we haven’t got the resources to match the ambition, where do we go with that?”
Cllr Ward said: “I think the answer to that is fairly obvious. We will have
to cut our cloth to suit won’t we? The Wednesbury to Brierley Hill Metro, there is not funding for. But it has been built into the medium term financial plan – some £4.8m from 2025-26 onwards to support that – but the truth is we do not have the money.
“I think there has been a problem which we all bear some blame for, which goes back a number of years.
“We have continued to make commitments that cost money on the assumption that things will all remain the same.
“But as we have seen with recent events, things are not remaining the
same. We now have an inflation rate of the best part of 10%; we have energy prices rocketing through the roof because of events elsewhere; and we have interest rates going up more than they otherwise would have done because of government action.
“We are in an extraordinary position and at some point we are going to have to recognise the reality of this.”
Cllr Bayton asked if the government would fund the Wednesbury to Brierley Hill extension.
Cllr Ward said: “I wasn’t aware Liz Truss had made a commitment to that. All I would say is there have
been a lot of spending commitments made by the latest Conservative government over recent weeks.
“Like everybody else I read the newspapers, I read the comments by economists; there doesn’t seem to be many people who believe this is a credible plan.
“I think over the medium term there’s going to have to be a balancing out of the budget so there’s either going to be tax increases, or there’s going to be spending cuts – that’s the real world we live in.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see further U-turns announced by the government.”