Multi-million pound gap in Cottam Parkway station funding
Lancashire transport chiefs have revealed that only half the money needed to build the long-awaited Cottam Parkway station is currently available—leaving a multi-million pound gap in the budget and the future of the project uncertain.
Lancashire transport bosses have explained what happened to the cash originally earmarked for a new railway station in Preston which now has a multi-million pound hole in its budget.
As the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) revealed this week, a question mark hangs over the Cottam Parkway project after it emerged only around half of the funding needed to deliver the facility is currently available.
The prospect of the long-awaited suburban scheme hitting the buffers came just days after the government announced it was giving Lancashire County Council £28.4m to get it off the drawing board.
However, rather than amounting to a green light for the new station, the LDRS learned the Treasury’s largesse fell far short of the approximately £55m that it is now estimated will be needed to deliver the decade-long vision. The price tag was previously put at £24m five years ago.
The shortfall – partially inflation induced – came in spite of funding having previously been allocated for the Cottam Parkway project via the last Conservative government’s Transforming Cities Fund in 2020.
The county council was awarded a total of £40m, having originally bid for £182m to deliver a much larger suite of transport packages than that for which finance was ultimately secured.
Within the allocation it did receive, £22.3m was set aside for the new station – to serve residents in the rapidly growing north west of the city – while a further £2.1m was due to be contributed to the scheme from the Preston, South Ribble and Lancashire City Deal, the government-backed plan to deliver the infrastructure needed to facilitate 17,000 new homes in the wider area.
The rest of the Transforming Cities money was reserved for projects including the revamp of Friargate and Ringway, which have since been completed.
However, the LDRS understands that the cash for the schemes was issued by Whitehall only once certain milestones had been reached.
In the case of Cottam Parkway, the extent of progress meant the amount drawn down was in the low millions – making the current government’s funding announcement last week effectively just a confirmation that the original cash pot was still available for the station, with around £6m on top.
In June 2022, Lancashire County Council’s cabinet gave the go-ahead to the advertisement of a contract to deliver the primary elements of the scheme, before detailed designs had been drawn up – described at the time as an “innovative” approach designed to make the project easier and more cost effective to realise.
It is understood that the contract was not ultimately awarded, meaning the work never began – and a suggested opening date of 2024 never materialised.
Planning permission was granted by Preston City Council in September 2023 – at which point the revised estimated completion date was 2029/30.
The search is now on for other sources of funding to put the project – first envisioned a decade ago in the Central Lancashire Highways and Transport.