Grant Shapps has launched a new attack on London mayor Sadiq Khan after agreeing a new funding deal to give Transport for London (TfL) around £1.2bn to the end of March 2024.
Telling Mr Khan it was ‘time to put politics to one side and get on with the job’, the transport secretary said: ‘For this to work, the mayor must follow through on his promises to get TfL back on a steady financial footing, stop relying on government bailouts and take responsibility for his actions.’
The agreement follows a series of short-term funding deals, some for just a few weeks at a time, to plug the gap in TfL’s funding that it said resulted from a fall in income during the pandemic.
TfL Commissioner Andy Byford said: ‘After weeks of negotiation, we have reached agreement with Government on a funding settlement until 31 March 2024.’
Mr Byford said that under the deal TfL ‘expects to receive further base funding of around £1.2bn from government until March 2024 and gives TfL ongoing revenue support should passenger numbers not recover at the rate budgeted’
He added that the deal would help TfL avoid large-scale cuts to services, and means that it will commit £3.6bn to capital investment over the period, with around £200m of new capital funding from Government beyond previously budgeted sources, allowing it to increase its asset renewal programme.
TfL said the deal leaves a gap in its budget of around £740m across 2022-23 and 2023-24 and that in order to accept the agreement it had to identify measures that would allow it to balance its budget.
However, it still needed to achieve further savings of around £90m in 2022-23 and £140m in 2023-24 beyond the £730m annual recurring savings programme it had had already committed to.
Mr Byford said that under the agreement London ‘will move away from the managed decline of the transport network’.
The Department for Transport said that as part of the deal, Mr Khan had ‘committed to submitting proposals to reform pensions, in line with TfL’s plans to become financially sustainable, by the end of September’.
Nick Bowes, chief executive of the Centre for London, said: the news would bring ‘a huge sigh of relief from Londoners and London’s businesses’.
Labour's London Assembly transport spokesperson, Elly Baker AM, called the deal ‘punitive’ for TfL. She said: ‘While it takes away the danger of the most drastic service cuts, there are still far too many unnecessary and damaging conditions attached and passengers will bear the brunt of the considerable funding gap.
‘Conditions imposed around staff pensions and pay rises are stoking the fires of industrial action – Ministers must take responsibility for this, especially when transport workers' pay packets are being stretched more and more.’
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