On 14 January, Secretary of State Heidi Alexander set out the Government’s plans for Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) which are to be delivered in three phases:
Electrification and upgrades east of the Pennines for delivery in the 2030s covering Leeds-Bradford, Sheffield-Leeds, and Leeds-York corridors. Capacity is to be increased at Sheffield station and York station will be redesigned. These upgrades are to be delivered in the 2030s. In addition, business cases are being developed for a through station at Bradford, on which a decision is expected by summer 2026, and the re-opening the Leamside line.
A new line between Liverpool and Manchester with stations at Liverpool Lime Street, Liverpool Gateway, Warrington Bank Quay, Manchester Airport, and Manchester Piccadilly for which the aspiration is an underground station. Most of NPR’s funding will be spent on this line which will be constructed in the 2030s and beyond.
Upgraded routes from Bradford and Sheffield to Manchester with further Leeds to Manchester improvements over and above the Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) during the 2040s.
It was announced that, over the coming decades, the Government will commit up to £45 billion for NPR. The funding available in the current spending review period up to 2029 is £1.1 billion for the development of NPR schemes. In addition, it has approved £115 million for longer platforms at Manchester Airport station and £11 million to develop a new Rotherham Gateway station.
It was also confirmed that the Government has a long-term aim for a new north-south line from Birmingham to Manchester, though no decisions have been taken on its specification other than that it won’t be a revival of HS2.
In June, the Chancellor’s spending review statement allocated TRU an additional £3.5 billion. As a result, this programme is now expected to cost £11 billion.
A long-awaited plan
The development of NPR dates back to 2014 when then Chancellor, George Osborne, proposed a rail link between Manchester and Leeds which became known as HS3. The leaders of Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield City Councils then published a report which endorsed Osborne’s HS3 proposal and called for an early extension of HS2 to Crewe and the delivery of HS2 between Leeds and Sheffield to be brought forward.
The term ‘Northern Powerhouse Rail’ seems first to have been used in a 2015 government report. This considered the benefits of fast, high frequency rail connections in the Netherlands and the Rhine Ruhr regions to show the case for significantly improved new rail links such as HS2 and HS3 between northern cities. The following year, a National Infrastructure Commission report endorsed this proposal and also considered that Manchester Piccadilly should be redeveloped as an underground through station. It also stressed the importance of rail freight.
Transport for the North (TfN) was formed in 2018 to make the case for strategic transport links across the North of England. Its first report included a map showing the HS2 Manchester and Leeds legs as well as HS3 and the Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU). A 2019 TfN report showed how a new Liverpool to Manchester line would share the HS2’s route into Manchester via Manchester Airport. This also detailed NPR’s benefits which included delivering £14 billion GVA per annum.
HS2’s leg to Leeds was cancelled in November 2021 as part of the Integrated Rail Plan (IRP). IRP also confirmed that the route between Manchester and York will be electrified as part of the TRU.
HS2’s leg to Manchester was cancelled in October 2023 with the publication of the Network North document. This stated that the Liverpool to Manchester line would be built and made commitments to electrify lines from Sheffield to Manchester and Leeds.
The Liverpool-Manchester Railway Board was formed in 2024. In May 2025, it published a report showing the benefits of a new Liverpool to Manchester line in the expectation that the following month’s Chancellor’s Spending Review statement would include a commitment to this line. Yet its only reference to NPR was that plans would be announced “in the coming weeks”. The recent NPR announcement was made six months later.
As shown above, it has taken 12 years to get a government commitment to NPR though this has a scope significantly less than originally envisaged. Nevertheless, there at last seems to be some certainty of what NPR will be.
Liverpool to Manchester
The NPR line between Liverpool and Manchester will be around 66km long and made up of four sections. The first is of around 17km between Liverpool Lime Street and a new Liverpool Gateway station at a location to be decided near Widnes. The NPR proposal shows two routes for this section both of which could require tunnels underneath the city’s built-up areas.
The second section is around 12km long and uses a redundant rail freight line past the decommissioned Fiddler’s Ferry Power Station and Widnes. This passes underneath Warrington Bank Quay station where a new part of the station will be built.
A 13km section of new line is the third section. This runs from the new Warrington Bank Quay station to Millington, near Junction 8 of the M56 where it joins the route of HS2 Phase 2b. Leaving Warrington, it may be possible for about a third of this route to use a disused railway if its bridge over the Manchester Ship Canal is suitable.
The final section is 24km of the HS2 Phase 2b route from Millington into Manchester Piccadilly which uses the now-cancelled route of HS2. This includes a new station at Manchester Airport from where there is a 13km tunnel which surfaces 1km east of Piccadilly. The HS2 plan was for the route to terminate in a new terminal station immediately north of the current station. This plan would require trains between Liverpool and Leeds to reverse at Piccadilly.
The 2025 report produced by the Liverpool-Manchester Railway Board details the opportunities for regeneration offered by this line which include thousands of new homes. Close to Manchester Piccadilly there could be up to 13,000 new homes and 820,000 square metres of new commercial development.
Piccadilly Underground
The NPR Liverpool to Manchester plan shows an NPR line heading west to Leeds. This would require Piccadilly to be to a through station that would have to be an underground station. Among many other benefits this would provide 36,000 sq. metres of public realm space to increase the opportunities for central Manchester’s regeneration.
In 2019, Manchester City Council commissioned Bechtel to study HS2’s proposals to expand Piccadilly station to accommodate both HS2 and NPR services. This report modelled train operations and concluded that the turnback layout of HS2’s preferred surface option had considerable operational disadvantages.
The report noted that although the HS2 Phase 2b alignment met the objectives of connecting Manchester to the Midlands and London, it did not optimise connectivity between Liverpool and Leeds. Hence it proposed an underground station alignment that would better fit terminating north-south services and through east-west services. This reduced the tunnel length from Manchester Airport from 13 to 12km and, for an underground station, the length of northbound NPR tunnels from 10 to 7.5km.
It concluded that a through underground station would require a station box comparable to that required by HS2’s Old Oak Common station with lines to be 20 metres below the surface – a similar depth of the six central London Elizabeth line stations.
Following the £45 billion funding announced in the NPR statement, Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham considered that this underground station must now be built. NPR compact agreements for each of the six combined authorities concerned have now been signed by the Secretaries of State for Transport and Housing, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the leader of the combined authority concerned. These specify how NPR will be progressed in each combined authority. The agreement for Greater Manchester states there will be a joint process to consider the underground Manchester Piccadilly option against alternative options.
Though expensive, the benefits of an underground through station are significant. In Issue 215 (Jul-Aug 2025) Rail Engineer explained how Stuttgart is to benefit from the replacement of its 16-platform terminal station by a new six-platform underground through station.
Birmingham to Manchester
In her NPR statement, Heidi Alexander confirmed the Government has a long-term aim for a new line from Birmingham to Manchester which is needed to address “longer-term congestion and crowding challenges on the WCML”.
She noted that the Liverpool to Manchester route will build a short section of this line which, she stressed, won’t revive HS2. She also advised that no decisions have been taken on the specification or timetable and that the Government will retain land already purchased for HS2 Phase 2a. She considered that the Birmingham to Manchester line will be built after NPR, which is the 2040s.
However, it is not clear whether all the required land for this line has been purchased. The powers to acquire land for HS2 Phase 2a route expire on 11 February. Though the HS2 Phase 2a Act gives Government the power to extend these powers for a further five years, there is no indication that this will be done.
A report commissioned by the Mayors of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, published in September 2024, explained why a do-nothing scenario north of HS2 Phase One is not sustainable due to WCML capacity constraints on passenger and freight growth. It recommended that the Government preserve its powers to acquire land and pursue new funding models.
The Mayors’ report was entitled ‘Opportunity through connectivity’. It highlighted how, compared with the Midlands and the North, Germany’s Rine-Ruhr region benefits from the connectivity provided by its fast frequent rail services.
Recently in the House of Lords, Rail Minister Lord Hendy acknowledged that a new line between the West Midlands and Crewe might be needed before the 2040s due to WCML capacity issues. He stated that the Government is committed to retaining the land for this line as it knows “that at some stage a railway will have to be built”.
Heidi Alexander’s statement that a new line won’t revive HS2 illustrates the toxic perception of the project. Yet it is difficult to see how this statement can be taken literally. It would be folly to retain land for the HS2 Phase 2a route if a new railway is to be built elsewhere.
The development of the HS2 Phase 2a route was the subject of a rigorous design and Parliamentary process. From the initial planning to the passage of its Bill took eight years of which it took three-and-a-half to pass through Parliament. This took hundreds of hours of parliamentary time which involved numerous MPs, lawyers, and petitioners. Any suggestion that a new line between Birmingham and Crewe will not use the HS2 route would add years having to repeat this process. This would also waste ‘sunk costs’ which the Mayors’ report estimate to be £2 billion.
The 58km long HS2 Phase 2a route is also relatively inexpensive to build. It has no stations, is almost all through open countryside and runs in tunnels for 4% of its length. In contrast, 24% of HS2 Phase One is in tunnels. Its benefits were such that its delivery was to be accelerated to maximise the benefit of the expensive HS2 Phase 1 line to Handsacre. Government now intends to defer these benefits by building it almost 20 years later than originally intended.
Funding NPR
By 2019, TfN envisaged that NPR would include HS2 lines to Leeds and Manchester, new lines from Manchester to Leeds and Liverpool with an underground station at Manchester Piccadilly, in addition to the TRU. At the time HS2 Phase One and 2a bills were passing through Parliament with the expectation that the HS2 line to Crewe would be opened by 2030. The cost of all this would have been hundreds of billions of pounds.
Since then, these ambitions were scaled back with the cancellation of HS2 to Leeds and then Manchester. For years, no funding was committed to NPR other than TRU. The recent NPR announcement now provides some certainty though questions remain. For example, if, when, and how the HS2 Phase 2a route will be used and whether Manchester Piccadilly will get its through platform underground station.
It is quite possible that final costs of all NPR schemes will be more than the £45 billion funding cap. Relieving WCML capacity by building a line from the West Midlands to connect with NPR would cost additional tens of billions of pounds. Although these are expensive projects, they offer far greater benefits. Yet, with other priorities, Government is unlikely to be able to afford such hugely expensive projects.
Hence, it is important that these rail investments are part funded by the financial value they create. Indeed, the NPR compact agreements all refer to the requirement to raise local finance. Examples of how this has been done are:
- The 96km Dutch high-speed line from Schiphol Airport to Belgium required a consortium to design, construct, finance, and maintain the line for 25 years in return for an annual fee based on infrastructure availability.
- More than half of the 303km Tours to Bordeaux high-speed line was funded by a consortium that bears the line’s construction, maintenance, and revenue risk.
- The Northern Line’s Battersea extension was primarily funded by a £1 billion loan for which the debt is being repaid through developer contributions and increased business rates.
- The Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway (MTR) was entirely funded by MTR buying land at pre-rail prices and partnering with developers to capture the increased land value.
- Construction of the Elizabeth Line benefited from developer contributions of £4.1 billion from a special levy as part of the business rates regime.
As well as securing funding, it is essential that the NPR projects take account of the well-documented lessons of HS2 to ensure that they are delivered in a cost-effective manner. It has taken over 10 years for NPR to get a firm Government funding commitment. All being well, in another 10 years’ time, the first phase of the NPR project will have delivered significant connectivity benefits east of the Pennines.
The mid-2030s should also see construction of the new Liverpool to Manchester railway well advanced. If this includes an underground through station at Piccadilly, this will finally resolve the congestion constraints of Manchester’s historic railway network.
NPR certainly offers huge benefits, though these will only be realised with suitable funding arrangements as well as effective project development and implementation.
The Ordsall Chord was opened in 2017 as part of the Manchester Hub plan to increase rail capacity. However, the other Manchester Hub project to build extra though platforms at Manchester Piccadilly to relieve congestion on the Castlefield corridor was not progressed. As a result, the Ordsall Chord had limited, if any, impact and the Castlefield corridor is one of a small number of lines that Network Rail has declared to be congested infrastructure.
NPR will eventually relieve Manchester’s rail congestion in the 2030s.
Image credit: iStockphoto.com