MP bemused by lack of Ely North rail junction upgrade

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

An MP^▸ (Member of Parliament, or Mile Post (a method of measuring the railway in miles and chains from a starting point - usually London), depending on context) has been left "quite bemused" about why a major rail junction upgrade still has not happened.

For 25 years campaigners have argued that improving Ely North Junction in Cambridgeshire would make it possible to run more freight and passenger services and help grow the local economy.

The local Liberal Democrat MP Charlotte Cane claimed "for every £1 spent [the project is] likely to bring back nearly £5", ahead of hosting a debate in Parliament on Wednesday.

A Department for Transport (DfT^» (Department for Transport - about)) spokesperson said it recognised the scheme's importance and fully anticipated Ely North "will be part of a pipeline of projects to be considered as part of future funding decisions". They added: "There is a strong case for Ely Junction, and we are committed to working with a broad range of stakeholders to support its inclusion in the future pipeline."

Lines from Norwich, Cambridge, King's Lynn, Peterborough and Ipswich all meet at Ely North junction.

The project has received the go-ahead from previous governments on at least two occasions, but the work is yet to start.

In 2020, it was revealed the cost of the project had risen from £25m to £500m, while complicated engineering and a slowness to make decisions have also been blamed.

[Image from here is not available to guests]
Five rail lines from across the East of England converge at Ely North junction

Cane, the MP for Ely and East Cambridgeshire, said she was hoping Wednesday's debate would "get across the real importance of this project".

She said it would take freight off the roads and benefit not only the local area but also "the Midlands and further north".

"It's an amazing project... I'm still quite bemused as to why it hasn't happened yet," she told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.

The DfT said when the previous Government announced Network North - of which this scheme was a part - it did not set out any plans for how to fund it.

[Witham Bobby]

Gobsmacked that the cost of the project has risen from £25M to £500M - twentyfold - whilst the politicos have been faffing around without getting started.

No wonder everything (except being sent to chokey for social media posts) takes so long and costs so much

[Trowres]

Gobsmacked that the cost of the project has risen from £25M to £500M - twentyfold - whilst the politicos have been faffing around without getting started.

I suspect that the £25m might refer to an earlier scheme limited to Ely North Junction, while the £500m scheme includes a lot more that was added to the scope when somebody found that  North Junction on its own wasn't sufficient to meet the objectives. There seems to  be a lot of level crossing work required, a new bridge and even new sections of road (if I scanned the text correctly).

I'm not sure when the Ely North Junction scheme was first proposed, but its implementation was postponed by the Hendy Review (November 2015) to sometime in 2019-2024 "to allow co-ordination with safety-critical level crossing works nearby".

New Civil Engineer provides some history on the scheme after that postponement:-

In 2018, a £9.3M funding package was provided to Network Rail by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership and the Strategic Freight Network. This enabled Network Rail to understand the requirements for increasing capacity through Ely and draw up a strategic outline outline business case (SOBC).

The SOBC then prompted a £13.1M funding agreement from the Department for Transport in autumn 2020 to develop design options and hold public consultations. These would inform the outline business case (OBC).

HOW MUCH? 
In the long and dreary way of planning infrastructure, an SOBC is an early stage, in which a problem is identified, possible solutions suggested and a rough idea obtained of how the costs and benefits weigh-up. It isn't meant to be super accurate, just good enough to see if its worth developing a scheme in more detail. "Cheap and cheerful" methods of estimating demand (for example) are allowed.

To give some idea of context, local authorities and other groups promoting Restoring Your Railway schemes typically had to make do with funding around £75,000. That could get you sufficient professional consultancy time to provide an SOBC to the required standard.

The wider scheme is a lot more complex than a single new station, but even so, how on earth did it cost over 120 times more to produce an SOBC?

I'm not sure if £13.1m for the next stage (OBC) represents better value-for-money. The detailed reports (SOBC and OBC) don't seem to be online. However an FoI request (not by me!) has provided a remarkably short document claiming to be the OBC (any of you remember being told off by teachers for failing to show your working leading up to an answer?). It's available at:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/eace_ely_area_capacity_enhanceme/response/3035382/attach/html/5/FOI202500537%20EACE%20OBC%20Executive%20Summaries.pdf.html

WHERE RAIL SCHEMES GO TO DIE?
The New Civil Engineer continues the story:

The OBC was submitted to the DfT^» (Department for Transport - about) in March 2022, seeking funding to advance the programme.

The situation has since gone stale. The Combined Authority convened a summit in summer 2023 to revive the plans.

A few months later it was included in the haphazardly concocted Network North document put together by the Sunak government after the cancellation of HS2^▸ (The next High Speed line(s)) north, though it did not set out any way to fund the scheme and no material advancement on the plans was made.

Suffolk Chamber of Commerce sought to garner support for the scheme for the 2024 spring Budget. There was no response.

A little more detail can be gleaned from a letter of 12th September 2022 from several MPs^▸ (Member of Parliament, or Mile Post (a method of measuring the railway in miles and chains from a starting point - usually London), depending on context) and others to government ministers of that time. I will quote only the relevant parts:

[The Ely and Haughley Junction schemes] have been identified as priorities within the Rail
Network Enhancements Pipeline, however, as yet have not received committed funding and have
been subject to considerable delay.
...
Wendy Morton MP, then Minister for Transport, included
welcome recognition of the “the benefit of the Ely programme and its strong alignment to the
Government’s priorities” and that “the programme continues to demonstrate sound
decarbonisation and connectivity benefits.”

But the same correspondence indicated the Department for Transport were considering cancelling
or indefinitely pausing some schemes within RNEP and instead would be exploring “opportunities to
realise at least some of the desired outcomes, either through wider operational changes to the
network or through smaller, targeted investment enabled by future funding settlements”.

This would be the RNEP that was introduced to replace the fixed 5-year enhancement plans of NR^» (Network Rail - home page), and for which there was supposed to be an annual update plan, which has never appeared.

Of course, most of that history covered the previous, Conservative, government. Nice to see in the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) article of 2nd December 2025 that the DfT said:

it recognised the scheme's importance and fully anticipated Ely North "will be part of a pipeline of projects to be considered as part of future funding decisions".

They added: "There is a strong case for Ely Junction, and we are committed to working with a broad range of stakeholders to support its inclusion in the future pipeline."

So, schemes can be delayed for years and things cost too much, before even the oft-blamed bats and council planners get a look-in.

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In case anyone wishes to follow up, the links are:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgr9rg5r42o
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-51659351
https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/dft-says-ely-junction-upgrade-to-be-considered-for-future-pipeline-as-local-mps-continue-push-31-07-2025/
https://www.elystandard.co.uk/news/20707553.threat-cancel-indefinitely-pause-450m-ely-rail-upgrade/
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/23833666.government-confirms-ely-junction-rail-revamp-go-ahead/
https://www.elyeastcambsconservatives.org.uk/news/lucy-frazer-presses-action-ely-north-junction
https://www.flua.org.uk/fenman_pdf/The%20Fenman%202016%20No%201.pdf
https://www.georgefreeman.co.uk/sites/georgefreeman.co.uk/files/2022-09/final-signed-letter-re-ely-and-haughley-junctions-ee-appg.pdf
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/eace_ely_area_capacity_enhanceme/response/3035382/attach/html/5/FOI202500537%20EACE%20OBC%20Executive%20Summaries.pdf.html

https://www.networkrail.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/hendy-report.pdf