West Yorkshire pauses £270m of transport investment to ease budget pressures

Transport schemes in West Yorkshire worth about £270m are to be placed on hold due to rising costs. The West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) said it had identified about 40 schemes which could be "paused" to ease pressures on budgets.

The delays agreed by the WYCA finance committee will affect road-widening projects, park and ride schemes and railway station redevelopment, reports the BBC.

Inflation, Brexit and the Ukraine war were "having a significant impact" on infrastructure projects, WYCA said.

The projects being paused would enable it to mitigate inflationary issues for schemes already in progress.

Among the biggest schemes to be affected are the £48m Bradford to Shipley Corridor Improvement and the £46m South East Bradford Access Road. The authority will also pause Kirklees’ A62 to Cooper Bridge improvements and Bradford’s £20m A650 Tong Street scheme while it seeks alternative sources of funding.

The £23m Halifax Station Gateway will also be delayed along with two bus park and ride, and five rail park and ride schemes.

WYCA says the schemes will still be delivered over a longer period of time and alternative funding sources are being sought.

The authority’s £1bn transport programme currently has over-programming of £151m, which could potentially increase in the near future to £215m due to the impact of current inflation rates.

The committee was told that over-programming needs to be reduced and “headroom created” within the programme to fund unforeseen cost rises expected in the coming 12-18 months due to inflation rises.

"Record levels of inflation, combined with the knock-on effects of Brexit, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, are having a significant impact on the costs of infrastructure projects across the country," a WYCA spokesperson said.

The organisation had worked with councils across West Yorkshire to "minimise disruption" and ensure no part of the region was unfairly impacted, they added.

"All of these projects will help level-up our region and we'll be holding government to account over how these will be funded", the spokesperson said.

Stephen Waring, from the Halifax and District Rail Action Group, said the move was disappointing, but expected.

"We've been campaigning for this for a long time, council officers have been working on this for a long time.

"But we knew when we could see inflation was going to be more than 10% again that these scheme were at risk".