Still waiting for A38 safety funding
As Parliament resumes this week, the question on the lips of many MPs is “How much of the £36 billion cut from HS2 will end up being spent in my area?” Here in South East Cornwall, road safety campaigners are asking “Will this pay to make the A38 safer?”
Sadly the early signs are not looking good: £29.5 billion will be spent in the North and the Midlands, leaving just £6.5 billion (the amount saved on the Euston Station section) to share between the whole of East, South and South West England. Almost half of this (£2.8 billion) will be spent on resurfacing potholed roads, but of course without the funding to carry out preventative works (such as unblocking drains), the potholes will soon reappear. An unspecified amount will be used to extend the £2 cap on bus fares, but only for another year. Not exactly the “long-term decisions for a brighter future” promised by the Prime Minister in his conference speech.
According to the Government’s official statement, that will leave just £610 million “to ensure the delivery of 39 road schemes”. That sounds to me like a euphemism for covering the overspend in projects which are already underway, so probably won’t provide anything for the A38 in Cornwall.
Therefore our hopes for the A38 rest on the phrase “In addition, we are launching a fund worth more than £1 billion for new roads.” But once again I detect the whiff of political spin: Euston station wasn’t due to be built until after 2025, so "reallocating" this funding won't build anything else before the next General Election! And crucially, only part of the cash will be allocated before polling day, enabling every MP to stand for re-election promising that they will use their powers of persuasion to secure new funding for their area. This was exactly the pattern we saw in 2019: A handful of big projects were confirmed a few weeks before polling day to whet the appetites of voters, and our MP promised that if she was re-elected, she would fight to get a new dual carriageway from Carkeel to Trerulefoot, along with upgraded junctions at Menheniot and Lean Quarry. Once the election was over, all we got was a three year consultation which said we only need speed cameras and an alteration to one bend, and that even this would have to wait until 2030 to be delivered. Now we are expected to believe that if we re-elect the same person for the fifth time, making the same promises which have been broken four times before, somehow things will turn out differently.
After yet another week of collisions, road closures and tragic loss of life, that’s a risk South East Cornwall cannot afford to take.