WOLVERHAMPTON, West Midlands – 11:45am, Saturday October 23^rd, 2021

“I express my delight and fully welcome the announcement by Her Majesty’s Treasury, at the West Midlands Combined Authority being awarded £1.05 BILLION, from the Government's new City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement fund.

This funding is I gather, the largest single awarding of transport funding in our region's history and is a significant step forward, in the ambition of the Combined Authority and Transport for West Midlands, to both improve connectivity (particularly via the Metro and the Rapid Transit Bus network) and help achieve the 2041 deadline for a net-zero carbon region.

The full detail is to be ironed out in the coming months, but with the expansion of the Metro, the building of new Railway stations, further Electronic Charging Points, enhancements to buses (with hopefully more to come from the Bus Service Improvement Plan fund) and more, will mean that between 2022-2027, tangible, fast and much needed improvements will come our way.

It is naturally disappointing, that the full £1.7 Billion bidded for was not awarded and with Portfolio Lead for Transport Cllr Ian Ward, telling us on the Transport Scrutiny Sub-Committee yesterday that "we were told to overbid", should rightfully make Government think carefully for future schemes. Knowing too that this was a process against 6 of the other Mayoral Authority areas, means the risk of going all out will mean other plans will be halted and that is gutting; both here in WM and right across each authority, knowing of the work that needs to take place to support the "Levelling Up" agenda.

Nevertheless, funding of the kind - which ultimately helps the lives of our population is always positive and I look forward to seeing this green led transformation of transport, spring to life in a way not seen before!"

ENDS