Blame, trains and 'trams on wheels': How Liverpool fared in Labour’s spending review

Dear readers — welcome to your Monday briefing. This week our usual team of two is reunited in Post HQ; Laurence has returned from his week off, where he revelled in the tropical climes of Costa Del New Brighton while cleaning baby vomit off his new jumper. Ah, to be a parent.

Catch up and coming up:

• Last week, Jack published the much anticipated Part Two of his investigation into Blue Coat School and its ex-deputy head, Nick Barends. In it, he digs into how Barends was eventually dismissed from his role at the school — read that here.
• And if you missed our weekend read, make sure to catch up on David Lloyd’s tour of the Liverpool Biennial. “Excellent article David, all too often we are unaware of what is going on in the city culturally,” one of you said in the comments. Let us know your thoughts here.
• Coming up this week, Laurence asks whether Prescot’s Shakespeare North Playhouse is producing enough bang for its buck.
• We’ll also be publishing a piece about a rather controversial figure in the pub industry in Liverpool. Think you know who we’re talking about? Email editor@livpost.co.uk. 

The big story: How Liverpool fared in Labour’s spending review

Top line: Rachel Reeves has backed the Liverpool-Manchester Railway project. But the chancellor’s spending review is scant on details.

Context: If Rachel Reeves’ term as chancellor so far was an historic train journey, it might resemble the original 1830 Liverpool & Manchester Railway launch – declaratively ambitious but rattling, with a few disasters along the way, and billowing portentous plumes across the North West landscape.

In her 2025 spending review, Reeves was keen to break from the Conservatives’ austerity project, mentioning “14 years of mismanagement and decline”. To redress this economic dwindling, she announced a real-terms spending rise of 2.3% a year.

This means more money for defence, the police, social housing, schools, and transport. It’s the latter that will have most interested local government and regional mayors, with several railway, bus and tram projects now expecting to receive treasury backing.

A total of £1.6 billion was allocated to the Liverpool City Region. Despite Reeves seeking to distance herself from her Tory predecessors, this is the same amount allocated to LCR under the previous government in October 2023. But in any case, according to Liverpool Council leader Liam Robinson, this funding will go towards a zero-emission bus fleet, depot infrastructure, and the return of buses to public control. In addition, a new network of “glider” buses — previously described as “trackless trams” that run on wheels — will better connect the city centre with John Lennon Airport, north Liverpool, and both football stadia.

No tram for Liverpool: In a Radio Merseyside interview, metro mayor Steve Rotheram called gliders a “quick solution" to the logistical problems of getting people from A to B, admitting he would “bite your hand off” for a tram system. But even while lauding the billion-quid bounty from the Exchequer, Rotheram soon found himself under criticism, chiefly around matters of ambition.

“Manchester, Yorkshire and Birmingham get new tram lines while Liverpool is left behind with more of the same. Buses,” said Carl Cashman, leader of the Lib Dem opposition on the council.

Andrew Makinson, a Lib Dem councillor for Allerton, also posted criticism on X: “Leeds and Bradford are getting a tram system built from scratch, but mayor Steve Rotheram says that’s not possible in Liverpool,” Makinson said. “Spending £100 million to create a bendy-bus route to the airport shows no vision and zero ambition.”

In the last year or so, The Post has published several articles about doomed tram projects around the city region, including this editorial about the failed Merseytram proposal and Jack Lyons’ brilliant history of its Left Bank equivalent, Wirral Streetcar. Of course, Merseyside is not the only region to fail to match Manchester, Sheffield and Nottingham in reviving a tram network: central London, Bristol and Leeds have also been subject to cancelled schemes.

But in the same spending review that allocates £1.6 billion to Liverpool, one of those cities – Leeds – will be getting £2.1 billion, with mayor Tracy Brabin looking to build two tram lines alongside enhanced bus routes and services.

A reason for Liverpool’s reluctance to pull the trigger on trams may be found further north. In 2023, Edinburgh finally completed its own light rail project, an 18km line around the city. Originally priced at £545 million, the construction was beset by legal conflicts and battles between its contractors and the council, eventually costing the city £1 billion. That works out at around £100 million a mile, after 12 years of near-continuous disruption for residents and businesses while the line was being built. The Liverpool City Region is both larger and more populous than the Scottish capital, and whether the benefits of a light rail system outweigh the potential costs, delays and disruption will doubtless be a question on the mind of decision makers. 

A new railway? Meanwhile, another project that seemingly got the green light was the Liverpool-Manchester Railway (LMR). Our recent deep-dive into Northern Arc, the infrastructure proposal headed by Rotheram and his friend and Manchester counterpart Andy Burnham, included an explainer on why the mayors believe a new line between the cities is necessary when one already exists. 

LMR would be a section of a larger “Northern Powerhouse Rail” (NPR) that would ultimately stretch from Manchester to Bradford and Leeds, and onwards to the Humber and North East.

But the government’s commitment to a Liverpool-Manchester rail route did not include a specific funding amount. The previous government pledged a whopping £12 billion to the NPR, which Rotheram and Burnham believe Reeves would have to increase to see the scheme come to fruition. 

Bottom line: As ever with transport proposals, key figures in both Westminster and closer to home must weigh short-term political capital against long-term benefit. Depending on your perspective, Liverpool’s allocation for transport in this spending review may look simultaneously ample and indicative of a lack of ambition.

British cities like Liverpool once led the way on light rail, but compared to their continental equivalents have much catching up to do. While Edinburgh remains the nightmare precedent, Coventry’s continued investment in their “very light rail” system — a 20-seat, battery-powered miniature tram for which the concrete slabs and rails were installed with a fraction of the disruption of a traditional tram line, may make Liverpudlians seethe with envy.

If the Northern Arc prospectus is right, and the LMR has the potential to add £90 billion output to the UK’s economy by 2040, the chancellor may think that’s an investment worth making. But ifs and whens are poor currency in five-year parliamentary terms. 

What do you think of the 2025 spending review? Let us know in the comments below.

Photo of the week

A lovely shot of Canning Dock, captured by one of our readers, Paul Tunney. 

Have a photo to share? Email editor@livpost.co.uk with your best snaps for a chance to be included in next week’s edition. 

Your Post briefing

Business owners in Southport are furious after the council awarded a £140,000 contract to a business it owns. Over the past few months, businesses around Market Street and King Street have reported losing income because of roadworks. Despite repeatedly asking Sefton Council for financial support, they have been denied any such help. Now, the council is facing fresh scrutiny after it was revealed they awarded a £140,000 consultancy contract to Sefton Hospitality Operations Ltd — a company wholly owned by the council. It was first set up in 2021, and last year posted a loss of close to £1.5m. In the authority’s defence, council leader Marion Atkinson said if the council had gone to external consultants it would have cost about three times more. Others aren’t convinced — with one business owner telling the BBC the decision amounted to a “slap in the face”. 

Liverpool has opened a new police station, based on the Alder Hey Children’s hospital campus. The new location aims to make police officers more accessible to people visiting the hospital, and create a space where vulnerable witnesses feel safe and at ease. The station will also serve as a drop-in point for the local policing team and response officers, as well as police staff. The new site will be known as the Springfield Park Community Police Station, and can be found in the Catkin building.

And the UCU has warned that more job cuts at Liverpool Hope University will have a “devastating impact” on the school’s reputation. This month, staff at the university have been invited to apply for voluntary redundancy, with nearly 40 lecturers facing losing their jobs. This included reducing the size of the school’s theology and religious studies department from a headcount of six to two. "It shows that management is willing to sacrifice our institutional identity as a Christian and Ecumenical University just to make some savings from the academic staff budget,” Roberto Catello, from the UCU, told the BBC. A university spokesperson said they were working with the UCU "to explore all options".

Post Picks

🪘Head down to the Katumba Culture Hub on Upper Hill Street tomorrow for another session of Katumba drumming. No prior experience is needed — the session starts at 6.30pm. Find out more here.

🎸Also tomorrow: Jacaranda Records hosts a listening party for rock band Haim's new album, I Quit. It’s free to enter, but there are limited spaces. Find out more here.

🧶Learn the basics of crochet on Friday over at Queens Dock Business Centre. All yarn and crochet hooks are provided, as well as tea and coffee to fuel the session. Find out more here.

🛋️On Saturday, Penny Lane Church hosts its mid-century vintage marketplace dedicated to retro homewares, furniture, lighting and collectables from the 1940s to 1970s. It kicks off at 10.30am — more details here.