A64: No Government funding to dual major Yorkshire road for next five years, says minister

The long-awaited upgrade to the road linking Leeds, York and Scarborough has seen cross-party support and many decades of campaigning, but successive Governments have overlooked it.

It comes as the Government announced a £27 billion five-year investment plan for major roads and motorways across the country, including for the dualling of the A66 between Cumbria and North Yorkshire, to cover the period between 2026/27 and 2031/32.

The Government says this will help resurface more than 9,000 kilometres of motorways and major A-roads, amounting to a quarter of the network.

While 16 schemes have been earmarked for major development, including the Lower Thames Crossing, the A64 has again been overlooked.

Roads and Buses Minister Simon Lightwood, who is also the Labour MP for Wakefield and Rothwell, told the Yorkshire Post: “The A64, I'm afraid, won’t be on the list (of projects getting upgrades) on this occasion.

“But what I would say is that we will be working with the mayor, working with local leaders to consider what more we can do to support that.

“I've driven that road many times with my family off to Scarborough, I know there's some real pinch points there, so we'll continue the conversation with local leaders to look at what future interventions can be made.

“We've had to make some really difficult choices, to be frank.

“We inherited an unrealistically long list of unfunded schemes from the previous government, lots of which played into that £27 billion black hole that we inherited as a government.

“So this time, we're drawing a line under that, which people can trust, that if we say we're going to invest in something we will invest in it, but unfortunately, the A64 isn't in this round of funding."

Conservative MP Kevin Hollinrake represents Thirsk and Malton, and has campaigned for the upgrade since he was elected in 2015.

Reacting to today's announcement, he said: “It’s dire news. We had finally got it back in the pipeline, so it was back on the agenda.

“We got it priced, we picked the route, and now to hear this, it’s devastating.

I've never played party politics with this, but we tried to get Labour MPs onside, to sign a letter asking their own government to support it, as I would have done as a backbencher when we were in Government, but none of them would. I think it's just disgraceful.

“I think it's the most important piece of infrastructure across North Yorkshire, and it’s just such a travesty that yet again, it'll be put on the back burner.

Asked about the Government’s pledge to work with leaders to explore alternative funding streams, Mr Hollinrake said: “You need hundreds of millions of pounds to build a project like this, you’re not going to get that just by some talks with local leaders whose budgets are already very tight, you need significant national investment.

“That's what we've been pushing for for years, in fact, decades.

“Somebody told me, I think it was (North Yorkshire Council leader) Carl Les, that he’d seen a letter in the Yorkshire Post in 1905 that said it was high time the road was dealt with.

“But now it feels as though we’re back at square one.”