Worries over Transport for the North future 'reduced' after Grant Shapps meeting

Chairman John Cridland updated TfN members yesterday following a meeting on Tuesday with Grant Shapps to clarify the role of the Government’s new Northern Transport Acceleration Council (NTAC) and its implications for TfN.

It comes after the chairman of the partly Leeds-based body, set up to transform northern transport links, also accepted the role of president on NTAC, which aims to drive through the trans-Pennine upgrade between Leeds, Huddersfield and Manchester.

The Government said the council, announced in July, would mean “northern leaders have a direct line to ministers”, but in the same month TfN chief executive Barry White was forced to hit back against a report in the Sunday Times claiming some in Government saw it as a slow-moving “talking shop”.

Mr Cridland told members: “You will be pleased to know that the Secretary of State confirmed that he saw a key role for TfN going forward and that that role was complementary to the NTAC.”

He added that Mr Shapps has praise for TfN and its achievements “but he did, as is his prerogative, emphasise that he believes we need to focus in our priorities, and affordability alongside ambition and benefits was an important part of the judgements he was looking to us to make.”

Mr Cridland said Mr Shapps told him that he wanted to “strengthen the partnership” between TfN and the Department for Transport (DfT).

He said: “What he particularly asked us to do was to make representations to him, given that it’s still the DfT and ultimately his sign-off that funds this organisation, and as he has said to a number of other STBs (Sub-national Transport Bodies), he would rather have that dialogue through meetings like we had on Tuesday...as against what he described as lobbying in public, which he didn’t think was the best way to achieve progress.”

He said the meeting “tangibly reduced the very real uncertainty about TfN that we had in July,” adding: “It’s clear that (Mr Shapps) is giving us support.

“I think two months ago there was a question mark in our minds about that.”

Yesterday’s TfN board meeting followed an anonymous source on Saturday last week telling The Yorkshire Post there were concerns over a conflict of interest after Mr Cridland was appointed to NTAC and whether he “is working for politicians who represent people who live in the North or his new boss the Transport Secretary”.

Mr Cridland responded by telling members that he took the unpaid role because he considered it the “best way to establish a tangible link between the TfN and the Department for Transport and also be able to “sustain the TfN mission”.

The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, who was also in the meeting with Mr Shapps, said he sees Mr Cridland as “a broker” between the desires to speed up transport northern transport projects and to build the right infrastructure.

Lincolnshire-based councillor Christopher Brewis added: “I think it’s unique that people of different areas work together for the material benefit of the North. I have complete confidence in what you’re doing and the decision you’ve taken, effectively on our behalf, was entirely right.”