Civil service 'hated' A1 dualling plan, ex-MP says
ReutersFormer Transport Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan claims civil servants "hated" the proposed scheme to dual the A1 and frustrated attempts to get the project done.
Much of the A1 north of Morpeth is single carriageway and, in October 2024, the current government scrapped a Conservative plan to upgrade it calling it "unfunded and unaffordable".
Trevelyan told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the Civil Service "hated it because it didn't meet the budget models that any road down south did".
The Department for Transport (DfT) said it had to make "difficult decisions" on projects the previous government failed to fund given the "challenging financial picture" it inherited.
The scheme would have seen 13 miles (20km) of road between Morpeth and Ellingham made into a dual carriageway.
Trevelyan, who was briefly secretary of state for transport in the Liz Truss government and the area's MP from 2015 until 2024, made dualling a key point of her election campaigns.
The Conservatives had approved the long-talked about plan under Rishi Sunak, but the timing was criticised as it came after numerous delays, with the party well behind in the polls and the election already called.
Trevelyan said the project was "waiting to go, but Labour came in and scrapped it".
"We ended up spending over £60m on all the prep work," she said.
"Everybody was lined up waiting for the final stage to go, and Rishi pulled the plug and called an election."
Trevelyan said: "They could have taken this as a Labour win, but they presumably took the advice of civil servants who would always rather spend money in the south.
"It was hard, levelling up was hard, we were fighting a system," she said.
"The civil service simply didn't want to do it."
She said it came down to a political choice.
'I tried and failed'
"It's not that they're bad people," Trevelyan said.
"It's that the frameworks that they work to continue to deliver that outcome.
"We can do that if we want to, we could get a mandate that says value for money is more than cash terms.
"I tried and failed on this, but that doesn't mean we can't keep trying. Otherwise, the North remains the poor relation."
Calls to reopen the case for dualling reignited after six people were killed on the road in little over a month.
Local leaders from across the political divide called on the government to reconsider the case.
Responding to Trevelyan's comments, a spokesperson for the DfT said: "Given the challenging financial picture we inherited, we have had to make difficult decisions on a number of road projects the previous government failed to fund."
It also said National Highways was working to improve safety and congestion on the stretch as part of the third Road Investment Strategy.
Details of the scheme, which runs from 2026 until 2031, have yet to be revealed.
