London mayor halves transport funding request from Budget

London mayor Sadiq Khan has halved – in comparison with final 12 months – the minimal amount of cash he’s asking from the federal government to fund main transport tasks.

The Labour mayor had requested the final Tory authorities in 2023 for at least £569m to pay for a variety of infrastructure upgrades, and complained after receiving solely £250m.

Khan advised the Local Democracy Reporting Service he now believes it might depend as “a win” to obtain “anything more than £250m” from the Labour authorities.

City Hall Tories stated the mayor was “watering down” what they declare have been “exaggerated financial demands”.

Khan stated the diminished funding demand was as a result of “£22bn black hole” in public funds cited by the chancellor.

Ahead of the final authorities’s autumn assertion in November final 12 months, Khan had stated in a letter to then-Chancellor Jeremy Hunt that Transport for London (TfL) “needs £569m in capital support for 2024/25 to support critical network upgrades and investment in critical road assets”.

He added: “Failure to secure this funding would put vital upgrades at risk and be detrimental to long-term infrastructure investment in the capital’s transport network, with consequential negative impacts on the wider UK economy.”

However, requested earlier this week what he can be requesting from the brand new authorities, Khan stated: “I’ll be asking for north of £250m. The £250m we got last year was before the £22bn black hole in the government’s year-to-year expenditure.”

The chancellor’s declare that she had inherited a £22bn hole within the public funds was met with ridicule by her Conservative opponents.

Her predecessor, Hunt, stated she would “fool absolutely no one” and accused her of a “shameless attempt” to put the groundwork for tax rises in her upcoming Budget.

But Khan insisted Reeves had been pressured to seek out methods to “make ends meet”, and stated, in that context: “I’ll ask for as much as I can get. But what I’m saying is, a win is getting anything more than £250m.”

He stated the “real prize” can be on the spring spending evaluate the place he hoped to safe a multi-year deal for funding after the 2025/26 monetary 12 months.

Neil Garratt, chief of City Hall Conservatives stated: “Last year the mayor said that £500m was the absolute minimum to stop TfL collapsing, but this year he claims that anything ‘north of £250m’ is a win.”

“Consistently under Khan’s mayoralty he made exaggerated financial demands, which made it impossible for a Conservative government to work constructively with him.

“Now that he has a Labour government he can’t get away with that; he’s forced to be honest. What other demands are going to be watered down in the next few years?”