'More detail needed' on HS2 cash for West

The HS2 Birmingham to Manchester leg has been cancelled

Political leaders in the West are waiting for more detail on a possible £100m in funding for travel schemes in the region.

When Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced he was scrapping the HS2 high-speed rail line from Birmingham to Manchester on Wednesday, he said funds would be diverted to other transport projects around the country.

Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees said it showed the city needed to be "ready" with a mass transit scheme.

But West of England Mayor Dan Norris said there remained a lot of confusion about what the money could be spent on, and whether it would truly be extra on top of existing funding.

"I've been checking with other metro mayors up and down England who have been promised extra money and there seems to be quite a lot of confusion," said Mr Norris.

"The figures that they are hearing about and I'm hearing about don't necessarily make sense. For example I've been told this £100m will be on top of another budget that I've not been allocated yet.

"I fear it has more to do with a very imminent general election so that it can sound very exciting and you can talk about a whole lot of possibilities whereas there's really not enough money to do hardly anything."

'Behind other regions'

Mr Norris said it was likely to be "weeks" before more details about the funding were revealed.

"There's an awful lot of things that we need to spend this money on because our region is arguably one of the very worst in the country [on transport]. It's certainly behind many other regions," he added.

"So £100m, if it's true and I stress that, is a significant sum of money but in the overall scheme of things it's a tiny amount.

"So for example, if people are pushing for an £18bn underground system, it's a 180th of that sum."

Mr Norris said one government suggestion was spending the money on improving access for people with disabilities at rail stations.

Overall, he said the funding announcement from Mr Sunak was a "very odd way to do politics".

Marvin Rees has accused opponents of his underground plan of lacking ambition for Bristol

Mr Rees said the switch of funding from HS2 to other regions demonstrated why local authorities "have to be ready".

He said: "When we first came into office and we were looking at the scale and ambition we have for Bristol, one of the things we were urged to do was get our schemes ready for government when they want to make an announcement.

"We should have had an announcement ready to go, because at that moment in time, when they stepped away from mass transit [HS2], you can bet your bottom dollar that ministers were pressing civil servants to come back to them with big announcements they could make, to make up for the potential vacuum that was going to be left by HS2.

"In the meantime we continue to build a case with both public and private investors, but you have to be ready.

"We can't underserve the city by having a lack of ambition for Bristol having the best."

A meeting of the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) in Keynsham on Friday will decide whether to proceed with the next stage of a possible mass transit scheme for Bristol.