We commend the respective Metro Mayors and their partners on the work they have done to plug the major gaps left behind by the previous Government’s wholly inadequate ‘Network North’ plan.
We strongly welcome key calls made by the report that overlap with the key asks we’ve made of the new Government as part of our ‘Fix the Spine’ campaign, including the call to retain land safeguarding and ownership between Handsacre, Crewe and Manchester, and to immediately prioritise delivery of a new route between Handsacre and Crewe, bypassing the major bottlenecks at Colwich and Shugborough (we call this the ‘Stafford Bypass Line’, the report refers similarly to the ‘Staffordshire Connector’).
We are pleased to see integrated thinking around how this route would connect with proposals for Northern Powerhouse Rail, including calls for the latter to be designed appropriately to serve both north-south and east-west services. We continue to advocate for our preferred ‘CrossNorth’ approach to be considered as part of a wider review.
We call for plans for high-speed rail north of Crewe to include provision for improved Anglo-Scottish services, and provision for further extension of new infrastructure towards the Scottish Central Belt in the future.
We join the Metro Mayors and the consortium behind this report in urging the Government to safeguard and retain HS2 Phase 2 land, accelerate delivery of a Stafford Bypass line / Staffordshire Connector, and develop a fit-for-purpose plan to get north-south high-speed rail to Manchester.
We will be setting out a refreshed version of our 2050 Vision for high-speed rail shortly.
