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Northern rail services could be cut FURTHER next year ‘in post-Covid managed decline’

The warning came as northern leaders gathered to discuss the future of the network, calling government rail funding reductions ‘crazy’ and ‘fundamentally unacceptable’

Rail services across the North could be cut even further from Spring 2023, despite ‘levelling up' promises and passenger numbers bouncing back faster than the national average.

A paper tabled to northern leaders reveals that the latest Treasury funding package for operators could soon lead to some ‘hard choices’, meaning ‘it isn’t clear that there will be sufficient funding to continue to support all services included in next year’s plan’.

Any cuts from 2023 would come on top of a reduced timetable already planned from next December due to chronic capacity constraints through Castlefield.

Andy Burnham called the threatened cut ‘fundamentally unacceptable’, while politicians in Liverpool, Warrington, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire all expressed similar concerns, warning the move amounted to the ‘managed decline’ of the northern network post-pandemic.

Lincolnshire’s representative, Conservative councillor Tom Smith, said the network serving his county was already at a ‘bare minimum’ and ‘barely usable’, meaning any further cuts would make it ‘unviable’.

West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin [echoed that view, warning] warned that the pandemic was being used as cover for rail cuts.