The Borough of Dudley, in the West Midlands, is pressing forward with plans to transform the borough through a series of projects totalling £1bn of investment.
This includes £24.1m on a new transport interchange in the town centre, which will improve connections with Birmingham, and therefore access to jobs and leisure, reducing journey times to around 40 minutes.
Alongside this are other projects centred around boosting education, housing, employment, and business.
Sandwell, in the West Midlands, was granted its Towns Fund bids today, with the borough as a whole set to receive £67.5m, higher than any other local authority.
The grant will fund a variety of projects, all with the aim of “improving the area for local people and businesses,” says Councillor Danny Millard.
The funding split between Rowley Regis, Smethwick and West Bromwich.
The next stage in the process is to developing business cases and submitting these for approval.
On 15th March 2021, the Department for Transport (DfT) announced that a second headquarters is to be established in Birmingham, in addition to a new northern hub in Leeds. It is intended that the expansion will create 650 new job roles in the cities by 2025.
Expanding the DfT’s presence in the Midlands and the North is the latest step in the government’s push to address the imbalance of Civil Service roles; at present, the majority of senior positions are London-based. The government has targeted that half of senior roles will be based outside of the capital by 2030, relocating 22,000 jobs across the UK.
Recruitment has already commenced, with 100 positions created so far. This includes senior civil servant positions, which is considered to be key to the success of the initiative. It is also hoped that the expansion of the DfT’s presence will in-turn help to boost local economies as part of the recovery from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Works have now commenced on the Colne Valley Viaduct by HS2. Ground engineers recently sank the first of almost 300 piles that will form the foundations of the bridge. As part of the ongoing construction of the bridge, Affinity Water and the Environment Agency are monitoring the local water quality and agreeing on working practices.
Over the course of the next year, a total of 292 underground piles will be constructed to support the viaduct’s piers, some of which will go to depths of up to 55m into the ground. Rather than hammering the piles, engineers will instead bore holes and backfill them.
Spanning 3.4km, the structure will be almost a whole kilometre longer than the Forth Bridge in Scotland and will become the UK’s longest railway bridge. Weighing 6,000 tons, the bridge will carry trains at speeds of up to 200mph (320km/h); it will be elevated 10m above the ground and will be supported by 56 piers as it crosses a number of lakes and waterways to the northwest of London.
It has been confirmed by the Scottish government that Scotland’s railways will be nationalised next year. As of March 2022, the ScotRail franchise, currently run by the Dutch firm Abellio, will be taken over by a new “arms-length” state operator. As part of the reform, all ScotRail staff will transfer to the new entity.
Although Abellio has been running the franchise since 2015 and agreed a 10-year term, the Scottish government announced in 2019 that it would be exercising an early break option, owing to years of poor performance and industrial disputes.
With reduced passenger numbers during the coronavirus pandemic, train services have been underwritten by the government since last March; the government has spent £452m in support for ScotRail and the Caledonian Sleeper.
The announcement follows the Welsh government who have adopted the same approach and ended the Keolis-Amey franchise in February.
Following a cost analysis which deemed the proposed scheme to “not be cost-effective for the taxpayer,” plans for the expressway have been cancelled. Under the proposals, the new road would have linked Oxford with Milton Keynes and Cambridge.
The expressway had been considered to be a significant part of infrastructure plans since 2017; the National Infrastructure Commission had previously indicated that the scheme, in tandem with the East-West Rail project, was essential to unlocking land for development in the Oxford-Cambridge Arc.
Whilst this particular project has now been abandoned, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps revealed that the government is still committed to improving local transport links. The Department for Transport (DfT) confirmed that alternative plans will be considered, alongside building the East-West Rail scheme.
On Wednesday 17th March, the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) granted permission for Hinkley Point B to restart producing energy. EDF had taken the nuclear power station offline last year, to undertake detailed assessments of the graphite cores.
The findings revealed that the condition of the cores was on par with what had been forecast. In conjunction with the assessments, EDF has spent over £3 million upgrading the plant during the closure.
EDF now intends to run the plant’s two reactors for six months before undertaking further inspections; subject to obtaining ONR approval, power would then be generated for a second six-month period. It is anticipated that these operation periods will generate eight terawatt hours of electricity, enough to supply two million homes for one year.
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