(29 Oct 2021, 10:52 pm)busmanT wrote The restoring your railway fund only has £500m to fund all the reopenings, so it’s no surprise that the £600m bid for Leamside has been rejected. Don’t forget that the north east has got funding for the Northumberland line so we’ve not been totally forgotten.

I guess in reality, it's no more ambitious than NECA bidding for more of a quarter of the pot of money available for BSIPs. Hopefully there's a plan B for that one though, whereas even the partial reopening of the Leamside seems to have been ruled out of this one.

This is the problem when the Government's 'levelling up' agenda is that everything needs to go through a competitive bidding process, rather than having deliverables being based on socio-economic benefit and need. It's an awful process, a one that forces regions to in-fight amongst themselves about which communities have the greatest need. Unless it changes, I'd suggest we have little hope of the North East getting the significant infrastructure investment it needs (apart from more tarmac)