Start date welcomed for trolleybus inquiry

Artist's impression of a trolleybus in Millennium Square

The inquiry will get under way on Tuesday, April 29, in the Regus office building in Wellington Place in Leeds city centre.

A pre-inquiry meeting will be held at Leeds’s Metropole Hotel at 10am on Tuesday, March 4, to organise the programme for the hearings.

Leeds’s trolleybus – or New Generation Transport (NGT) – scheme is being spearheaded by Leeds City Council and West Yorkshire passenger transport authority Metro.

NGT was given funding approval by the Government in 2012 but Leeds still needs to secure the Transport Works Act (TWA) Order that would hand it permission to build the £250m system.

As is normal for a scheme the size of trolleybus, Ministers will make a decision on the award of the TWA Order based on the findings of the inquiry.

Metro chairman Coun James Lewis said: “We have known from when we started developing NGT there would be a public inquiry so I’m pleased that we now have a start date confirmed.”

Anti-trolleybus campaigner and chairman of the Friends of Woodhouse Moor, Bill McKinnon, said: “The date is slightly earlier than we thought it might be, but it’s good to have something set that we can work towards.”

The public inquiry could last around two months.