Transport for London and the Department for Transport have come to yet another agreement to extend the current funding settlement for a short period of time – this time it will be extended until midday on 3rd August 2022. A longer term settlement is now on the table but this continues to be discussed between both parties with TfL seemingly not convinced that it meets their needs.
Andy Byford, London’s Transport Commissioner, said: “”We have agreed with the Government that our existing funding agreement will be extended until midday on 3 August 2022 while we continue to discuss the draft funding proposal from the Government. We have previously set out that we would need £927m for the remainder of this year, as well as a long-term capital funding deal to support London’s economic recovery. We are considering whether the proposal from Government meets that need and if not the very difficult set of choices we would need to make. There are some significant issues we need to discuss with the Government in terms of deliverability and the need to avert managed decline of the capital’s transport network in both the short and longer terms. We hope these discussions can be concluded successfully soon.”
This latest extension is for a further 5 and a half days and now means that this current Funding Settlement will have run from 26th February including many, many extensions.
The whole thing remains political from both sides with the Government wanting TfL to get their long-term finances in order by committing to various changes whilst for their part TfL have said they have done everything asked of them and yet are still not getting the funding they desire. TfL have continually said without enough funding they will have to start to reduce services across their networks in order to cut their cloth accordingly.