Dubious Decision Making in the Dark

WHY ARE THE AUTHORITIES trying so hard to stop anyone seeing what is really going on about the proposed West Yorkshire Mass Transit scheme?

In the information blackout on hard facts, there are growing suspicions, including an explicit suggestion, that the key ‘peer review’ of the £2.5bn project by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA), shows a scheme in a lot more trouble than just a ‘resequencing’ and several years’ delay can sort out.

This project and its handling are really important on a number of fronts. It is potentially the biggest local transport investment project in the country. It could herald a new era of public transport provision by more cost-effective urban rail systems that can be deployed more widely too. It will be a test case for new appraisal and wider cost-benefit approaches in authorising schemes as pledged by the government. And it can be a flagship for the devolution of local decision making and investment priority setting – and whether the government can really let go of control.

In which case the politicians involved – nationally and locally – need to be straight with the people of West Yorkshire, who have been promised a new mass transit for decades, and those looking on from elsewhere. Not least the transport professionals who are eager to learn how to improve the processes and practices to be applied in their work around the country

As LTT has reported, the NISTA review is understood to have identified shortcomings in the planning and delivery process, and business case preparation, and has pushed completion back from early to late 2030s. Some might suggest that this provides a handy piece of long grass in which to park the project, slow expenditure to a trickle, and eventually suggest some more acceptable alternatives.

At the moment it looks more like a case of how not to do things - from scheme design, planning and business case making to communications and winning public trust in politicians and their opaque behaviours. If there were ever a time not to simply say ‘trust us and everything will be fine’ it is surely now.

Mayor Brabin seems to believe that a cosy exchange of public letters with Transport Minister Lord Hendy means everything can still be regarded as hunky dory and the parties involved have all so far resisted all attempts to have the NISTA report disclosed.

Even if the publicly-funded report by the obviously important, but mysteriously governed NISTA shows that authorities in the region under Labour mayor Tracy Brabin were taking a flawed approach, it should be shared with the sector to allow it to learn from any mistakes that were made, and how they can be put right. Especially so, in fact.

Who ultimately decides on disclosure remains unclear, as is who actually commissioned it, and what were the terms of reference.

A real complication in this is the number of government bodies involved, and their roles and responsibilities. The main players are West Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (WYMCA), under Brabin, and the Department for Transport (DfT). NISTA is an offshoot of the Treasury, so both are also in the mix, and who knows who else in government?

WYMCA has backtracked on a suggestion that it might reveal the contents of the report, supposedly on legal advice, and the DfT has now refused one Freedom of Information (FOI) request, while others remain outstanding.

The announcement in December of a major rethink on the mass transit scheme, prompted by the NISTA report, was carefully choreographed between the parties to allow ministers to reassert a continuing commitment to it while saving face for a regional mayor from the same party about the problems with it and a significant delay.

Transport minister Lord Hendy, who now is responsible for the project within the DfT, wrote in his letter to Mayor Brabin that the government had allocated funding for the project as part of West Yorkshire’s £2.1bn Transport for City Regions fund between 2027 and 2032, which he said had “ensured that you have sufficient resources to make great progress on the project in that period”.

The question of ‘whose project is it anyway?’ also impinges on the question of ‘whose information is the NISTA report anyway?’ This comes sharply into focus when looking at the various bodies’ refusal to disclose the report and their grounds for doing so.

Hendy firmly framed the new situation, post the NISTA report, as a decision having been taken by Brabin, to “resequence” the project. The mayor, he said, had “taken steps to consider how best to provide delivery certainty to the programme, including drawing on independent expert advice”. So had she really, as this implies, called in NISTA herself? Is that something other similar bodies are now able or required to do with their local schemes?

However, Lord Hendy also noted an intention to include the programme in the Government Major Projects Portfolio, which he said “will help to ensure it has the full focus of Government on its delivery”. That sensibly should surely have happened before the involvement of NISTA , which is the government watchdog for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) and lifts them back out of local control into ministers’ hands.

This reflect a pattern, also seen in recent decisions over Northern Powerhouse Rail, where Treasury control over/oversight of projects, can include high profile announcements by the Prime Minister and Chancellor that catch the headlines, whilst those with the purse strings pushing them further down the track in tightly controlled ‘funding envelopes’. This is framed as providing “certainty” over delivery but a reliance on future spending rounds means no such thing.

Another complication for West Yorkshire’s mass transit scheme is how its aim to link Leeds and Bradford now relates to the Government’s own recent plans for Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) along broadly the same corridor. Are they both necessary - and justified?

The recent ‘compact agreement’ between ministers and Mayor Brabin on NPR includes at least a suggestion that the two projects may be fighting over the same limited funding pot. It states that while most NPR funding will be from central government, local contributions will be considered for specific or additional scope. “We will consider this in the round alongside existing local contributions to West Yorkshire Mass Transit,” it states intriguingly.

The question of ‘whose project is it anyway?’ also impinges on the question of ‘whose information is the NISTA report anyway?’ This comes sharply into focus when looking at the various bodies’ refusal to disclose the report and their grounds for doing so.

The WYCA initially said it would provide the report or a summary to its meeting on 22 January, but then backtracked, saying that it was unable to do so, “following legal advice”. It seems that came from its own legal officer and is on the grounds that it “contains information relating to financial or business affairs and disclosure at this stage could inhibit full and frank discussions about the project”. This appears to mix criteria in Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972 with language more often associated with FOI requests.

The full report was indeed eventually attached to the papers for the meeting for the Authority’s representative members, as ‘a confidential document’, citing paragraph 3 of Schedule 12A. Before that, it appears that they had just been given a summary or a briefing, which may or may not have been sufficiently detailed and comprehensive, and/or better than what was made available to the local media (but not LTT).

The issues over transparency saw a row break out during the Authority’s meeting, when Cllr Alan Lamb, leader of the Conservative Group on Leeds City Council and a member of the combined authority, alleged that the summary report for the meeting was very different from the actual contents of the peer review. This, he suggested, was an example of dishonesty, at which point Mayor Brabin said she was personally outraged by such an allegation.

The reasons given for such secrecy can perhaps be aligned by reference to what is going on in the real world. Both the WYCA and the DfT are claiming that policy decisions around the West Yorkshire Mass Transit are still in play. If so, are the Minister’s pledge that the scheme is nailed down and the Mayor’s pledge of ‘spades in the ground’ within two years authentic?  

But Cllr Lamb insisted: “I think people need to see and understand what is in this paper and what the implications are, because mass transit is in peril.”

WYCA monitoring officer Nikki Deol told members that the review included commercial and financial matters, and that it was her legal opinion that it be excepted from publication. At which point the Authority meeting went into closed session.

Meanwhile, the authority responded to an FOI request by stating that the report fell under Section 36(2) of the FOI Act, a subjective judgement that disclosure of the information “would be likely to prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs”, and also a handy tool to postpone a final ruling. It said more time was needed for it (Deol) to consider its response.

“Likely to prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs” is quite a high bar, which presumes – contrary to recent evidence – that public affairs are ordinarily conducted in an effective manner, and the exemption also requires the balance of public interest to be considered.

The DfT’s response to an FOI request was a little different. This was an outright refusal under section 35(1)(a) of the FOI Act, which allows information to be withheld if it relates to the formulation or development of (central) government policy, subject again to the balance of public interest.

The Department’s refusal letter claims (or reveals) that “policy discussions continue about the details of the project” and that it would therefore not be in the public interest to release the report at the current time. The DfT also cites the concept of a “safe space” for officials and ministers “to develop policy and conduct rigorous and candid assessments away from external interference and distraction”.

It claims that disclosure of the report would unacceptably erode this safe space for “an area of live policy development” and is liable to cause a “chilling effect [that] could risk closing-off discussions and the development of better options and lead to poorer policy outcomes, which is clearly not in the public interest”.

The reasons given for such secrecy can perhaps be aligned by reference to what is going on in the real world. Both the WYCA and the DfT are claiming that policy decisions around the West Yorkshire Mass Transit are still in play. But are they? If so, are the Minister’s pledge that the scheme is nailed down and the Mayor’s pledge of ‘spades in the ground’ within two years authentic?

The situation appears to be that a decision to at least resequence the project has been made, with if the business case is now distinct from the planning process, rectifying what is believed to have been one of the flaws found by NISTA in the original plan. Preparation of the Strategic Outline Case (SOC) “remains underway”, but with expected submission to the DfT put back “towards the end of summer 2026”. And that can hardly be a ‘shoo in for a yes’ can it?

Given that, in his letter to Mayor Brabin, Lord Hendy said that she had herself decided to resequence the project, and that the government remained committed to it, exactly what is the ‘live’ policy consideration that is taking place within central government prior to submission of the SOC?

The WYCA’s position seems equally confusing and contradictory, if not more so, in terms of properly exempting the paper from the requirement to publish papers relevant to a local authority meeting under paragraph 3 of Schedule 12A, relating to “financial or business affairs”. Logically, this should have been based on issues such as commercial confidentiality, rather than the need for a safe space.

And what is the real risk that officers might have their work to draw up that SOC prejudiced by the public knowing what is in the report? To outside observers It appears that the risk might be more one of embarrassment to the authority, its officers and leaders over what in NISTA’s opinion they previously got wrong, than to any current formal process of business case development.

Until, that is, you consider Cllr Lamb’s claim that “mass transit is in peril”. What if the report were really saying that the scheme is just not viable, or that buses are a better option than the promised trams, and the resequencing and delays are just a way of kicking it into that long grass? That would certainly justify the claim that the policy of developing the scheme is a ‘live’ one. But it would also massively boost the public interest case for releasing the report, and having a proper debate on what policy options now remain.

This unfortunate saga might only directly affect Leeds, Bradford and West Yorkshire, but the implications across the transport sector are likely to be significant, more generally, for light rail schemes and beyond. In theory at least, devolution and devolved funding should be leading to more and more city regions under mayoral combined authorities competently developing their own transport investment plans. And the means by which these are planned and delivered will have many similarities and learning points.

A lesson for politicians from this chapter of errors might be that claiming credit for a transport infrastructure scheme cuts both ways. If you take ownership and meddle with it, you will be equally liable to take the blame when it the numbers don’t add up, it goes off schedule, over budget, or all of the above. Another lesson is that spending public money requires proper scrutiny and discussion at all times. However embarrassing that is.

Peter Stonham is the Editorial Director of TAPAS Network

This article was first published in LTT magazine, LTT931, 4 February 2026.