THE Government has thrown a further £146m into the £1bn pot to dual the A66 trans-Pennine road, the Transport Secretary told The Northern Echo today.

Grant Shapps announced in May the preferred routes for the six stretches of the road from Scotch Corner to Penrith but today, following a Northern Transport Acceleration Committee (NTAC) meeting, he told the Echo that the new money would get the road-building finished more quickly.

“We have added another £146m to it to speed up the dualling, and this will halve the previously estimated construction time,” he said. Construction is due to start in 2024-25, although there is no firm end date yet.

Mr Shapps was speaking after chairing the second NTAC meeting which brings together – virtually – 50 council leaders from across the north to ensure the 157 transport projects, big and small, which are currently on-going, are moving forward at pace.

“We were elected to join up towns and cities in the north so that it becomes a powerhouse, and we are starting to commit money to that,” he said. “It’s great to talk about 2030 or 2040, but let’s deliver for this generation now in the next few years – it’s not just the grand projets but the stuff that’s going to help today.”

The grandest of grand projects is HS2 which Mr Shapps still feels is a correct priority in a post-Covid world.

“Absolutely HS2 is right now, I have no doubt at all.,” he said.

“We are building this for 100 years, 150 years, long after we have consigned Covid to very sad history. I believe people will want to meet each other again, and we would be fools not to connect the country up.”

He conceded that the high speed line stops well short of the North-East, but held out a little hope that it may one day come further north.

“The story of HS2 hasn’t been quick,” he said.

“On a map it gets up to Leeds and the most sensible thing would be to one day continue it past Leeds.

"Let’s get it there first, but I don’t rule it out, and whatever happens we need to improve connectivity for the North-East.”

Mr Shapps reeled off a list of projects in the region that, he said, would do that, including the projects to reinstate the railways cut by the Beeching Axe in the 1960s from Consett and Northumbria into Newcastle, and to upgrade the stations at Darlington and Middlesbrough.

One of the biggest rail difficulties in the region was the performance of Northern, especially along the Tees Valley, which became so poor that on March 1, the contract was removed from Arriva and taken on by the Government as an Operator of Last Resort (OLR). Then Covid struck.

“I have taken over Northern and the OLR is running that,” he said, “and we’ve got a review of the way we operate rail in the future which will come out in the new year.

“We have a huge challenge bringing people back to our public transport networks (after the pandemic), but the message for Northern users is that we are on it, that the Pacers have all gone and it is going to get better.”