How Transport for the North will continue to champion the region - Martin Tugwell

However, what’s crucial to unlocking that potential, is investing in our transport system, so that we connect people and places with access to services and opportunities.

Following a period of considerable social and economic challenge, it is more important than ever that TfN continues to champion the North and make the case for the investment that will deliver new opportunities for people in the North.

The publication of our 2022/23 Business Plan sees TfN set out how it will work to deliver that ambition, not just for the year ahead, but beyond that.

One of the biggest issues facing the North of England remains the need to address the decades of underinvestment in our transport system: poor and unreliable connectivity is holding our people and businesses back, constraining growth, and hampering accessibility and social mobility.

The need to decarbonise our transport system also creates the opportunity to harness the potential of the North’s cutting-edge technology to deliver a transport system that is not only fit for the future, but which is sustainable in the longer-term.

Since its establishment as the first statutory Sub-national Transport Body in 2018, TfN has become a regional centre of excellence for strategic transport planning - a trusted source of information, an award-winning national thought leader, one that has developed cutting-edge analytical tools that enable the TfN Board members to make the case for the North. As we move forward as a smaller, leaner organisation, we will continue to focus on our core role and responsibilities, developing our capability to support our partners (regionally and nationally) as they turn strategy into delivery on the ground.

We have a clear vision as to how investment in infrastructure and services will help unlock the potential of the North of England. Our work on decarbonisation and transport-related social exclusion complements our Northern Powerhouse Independent Economic Review. Together they allow us to make the case as to why we need to shift our focus when investing in transport if we are to ensure that our solutions are sustainable in the longer-term. Our approach puts the needs of the user at the heart of our work for only in this way will our solutions deliver real results for passengers and taxpayers.

This business year is a key one for TfN after having reshaped ourselves to ensure that we continue to champion the transport needs of the North moving forward.

We will continue to work with the Department for Transport (DfT) as co-sponsor for delivering the Integrated Rail Plan whilst at the same making the case for the longer-term ambition set out by the TfN Board for a Northern Powerhouse Rail that connects all of our great cities and towns. We will continue working with national organisations – such as Network Rail and National Highways – to ensure the North’s needs are reflected in their investment programmes, as well as supporting our own partners to deliver their proposals. And with legislation expected to be introduced in Parliament later this year to establish Great British Railways, we will be building on our experience of the Rail North Partnership to make the case for empowering TfN and its partners to have a strong role in the new organisation.

TfN’s added value comes from focusing on issues and investment proposals that are genuinely strategic in nature. This means focusing on infrastructure needs that extend beyond individual local authority boundaries; it means focusing on those issues that are of a common interest, where a collaborative approach enables solutions to be developed and implemented in a timely and cost-effective manner; and it means continuing to use the accumulated knowledge and experience held by TfN to influence and shape processes and programmes at a national level.

It is by speaking as ‘one voice’ for the North that we will continue to make the case for investment in the North thereby helping to reduce inequalities within our communities and enable people who live and work in the North realise their potential.

In providing that leadership the TfN Board has shown that it is willing and able to step forward and shape the future whilst not being afraid to take difficult decisions.

Martin Tugwell is chief executive of Transport for the North.