Ruislip & Eastcote & Northwood Gazette
Longing to have what London has
The Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, has suggested he’d be desperate for the kind of government funding Transport for London (TfL) has secured from the government after months of wrangling between Tory ministers and London counterpart Sadiq Khan.
In August, TfL secured its future after fares collapsed during the pandemic, securing around a billion pounds in extra funding that will unlock £3.6 billion of further spending in the London transport network.
The settlement – agreed after months of wrangling between TfL, Sadiq Khan and the Conservative government on the other side – with a prolonged war of words and threats of a full London transport shutdown if the capital didn’t secure the cash.
The deal will still mean bus routes will be cut and fares will go up, but investment in Piccadilly line trains as well as more spending on walking and cycling around the capital will go ahead. Staff pension schemes will however likely be affected, meaning more strikes are on the horizon, as MyLondon reported.
TfL now relies mostly on fare income to provide its services, but until 2018 received an annual grant of £700million that northern leaders long envied.
And it has received £6billion in bailout funding to cover losses during the pandemic, which devolved transport authorities have not had matched.
Mr Burnham’s comments are a dig on the lack of investment governments have given to northern transport services compared to the capital. Responding to a question from MyLondon, the Greater Manchester mayor said: “We’ve looked at the TfL deal that was finally done and we would love a large part of that. You have to be honest and say although it might be challenging for London and what they’ve traditionally had, for us – to have any sort of subsidy on that sort of scale, we would bite your hand off for some of that.
“It’s different as London has developed differently. Because of the way our [Merseyside and Manchester] systems have developed, I don’t think they’d ever require the level of subsidy of London. Our system is a street level [tram] system – we’re not talking mega subsidy. But we’d love a deal that guarantees a Covid recovery, which as I understand it is a lot of what Londoners got. We haven’t got that. We’ve got pots of sporadic funding that will run out for bus service improvement. We haven’t got a solid, secure financial platform to build is on.”
Mr Burnham’s comments came on the third day of the Labour party’s annual conference in Liverpool last week.