This week has been a big one for transport. Anyone who follows my social media will know that I have consistently been raising our transport infrastructure in Parliament, with Ministers, and with the Council. That can range from roads that need resurfacing and repairing – of which there are quite a few – to bigger more strategic projects. And all that work is starting to pay off.
The big progress started last month when we got confirmation that Lancashire County Council is to receive an additional £244 million over the next decade to transform the state of our local roads – an increase of 30% compared to the original plans. And in this financial year alone, that amounts to £37.5 million.
I’ll be asking the Council for a full list of planned work in Burnley using this funding, including on roads and other highways assets, and ensuring this aligns with what residents have been telling me about the areas most in need.
Importantly, this extra investment comes only because of the Prime Minister’s decision to reallocate billions of pounds of HS2 Phase 2 funding, into local transport projects that will have a much more direct benefit to all of us.
But this week the PM went further when he announced an additional round of funding, again from HS2 reallocated funds, for strategic transport projects and priorities. For us locally, it amounts to a huge £732 million across the whole county.
There are some big-ticket things I think we could do with that, based on discussions with residents, and I’ll be asking for more views in the coming weeks. But for me that must include a study on whether a slip road heading west, towards Blackburn and Preston, can be added to Junction 11 of the M65. With so much expansion and development having taken place near that part of Burnley, from Pioneer Place to Crow Wood, making that one change would reduce congestion on our roads massively. It’s unlikely to be straightforward, but the opportunity to look is one we can’t miss.
And we can also look at items like average speed cameras on Colne Road between Burnley and Brierfield, the Colne-to-Skipton rail line, the Padiham Greenway Bridge which we all want to see reopened, and the future of the M65 beyond Colne. It really is a game changer.
With the Budget just next week, I also continued to feed in my views on behalf of residents and local businesses to the Chancellor. But more on that next week.
