Department for Transport
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Roads, rail, aviation and electric vehicles. Has spent two decades building HS2 and is now spending the next decade explaining why parts of it aren't being built.
The Department for Transport spent £41.3 billion in 2024/25. Its capital budget is focused on three areas: HS2 (£7.1 billion per year), Network Rail (operating within a £44.1 billion five year ring fenced budget) and National Highways (£7 billion). That is vast spending on a system that millions of passengers and motorists experience as unreliable, expensive and permanently under repair.
Nine Transport Secretaries have served since 2010: Philip Hammond, Justine Greening, Patrick McLoughlin, Chris Grayling, Grant Shapps, Anne-Marie Trevelyan (49 days under Truss), Mark Harper, Louise Haigh (resigned after four months over a historic fraud offence) and Heidi Alexander. Grayling became known as "Failing Grayling" after a series of fiascos including the award of a ferry contract to a company with no ships. Haigh lasted from July to November 2024. The brief churns through ministers before any of them can see a major project through from announcement to completion.
Rail provides the clearest evidence of the gap between spending and results. The government contributed £11.9 billion to the day to day operation of the railway in 2024/25, nearly half of the industry's total income. Fare revenue reached £11.5 billion, up 8 percent, but remains 12 percent below pre pandemic levels. Passengers made 1.7 billion journeys. Britain now has one of the most expensive railway systems in Europe: substantial taxpayer subsidy, among the highest fares on the continent, and a service that regularly delivers delays, cancellations and overcrowding. The Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024 provides for all 14 train operating companies to be brought into public ownership by the end of 2027. Whether public ownership produces better outcomes than privatisation did remains the defining test of this government's transport policy.
HS2 is the department's most visible scar. Phase 2, from Birmingham to Manchester, was cancelled. The impairment cost was over £1 billion. The department has written off £2.7 billion from HS2 and road cancellations in the last two years alone. The remaining phase, Birmingham to London Euston, is receiving £25.3 billion. The Transpennine Route Upgrade receives £3.5 billion. East West Rail connecting Oxford and Cambridge receives £2.5 billion. These are genuine investments. They also arrive after a decade of cancelled projects, broken promises and communities left planning around infrastructure that never materialised. Network North, the previous government's plan to "reinvest" £36 billion from cancelled HS2 phases, was itself largely abandoned.
Roads tell a parallel story. Local authority managed roads make up 99 percent of road length in England and carry 66 percent of motor traffic. In 2023/24, local authorities spent £4.8 billion on road maintenance. An estimated 17 percent of the local road network is in poor condition. The government committed an additional £500 million for highways maintenance in the 2024 Budget and £817 million more in 2025/26. Potholes have become a national symbol of deferred maintenance, but the underlying problem is structural: decades of postponing repairs until the cost multiplies.
Bus services outside major cities have declined for years. The national bus fare cap was raised from £2.50 to £3.00 and extended to March 2027, covering 5,000 routes. The government is providing around £750 million per year to maintain and improve bus services, including franchising pilots in York, North Yorkshire, and Cheshire. For communities without reliable rail links, buses are the primary connection to jobs, education and healthcare. When routes disappear, isolation is the result.
The department is planning £663 million in efficiency savings. Resource spending is set to fall by an average of 5 percent annually in real terms through to 2028/29. Capital spending excluding HS2 is growing at 3.9 percent per year. The bet is that public ownership of rail, continued capital investment and declining subsidy as passenger numbers recover will produce a leaner, more effective department. That bet depends on passenger growth, project delivery and a political cycle that has historically changed direction before any plan reaches maturity.
The department can point to genuine achievements. Britain maintains extensive road and rail networks. Major ports remain globally important. Aviation supports economic growth. The rail nationalisation programme is progressing. Capital investment excluding HS2 is rising. These are not trivial.
What frustrates the public is the gap between cost and experience. A department spending £41.3 billion a year that has written off £2.7 billion in cancellations, that subsidises a railway at £11.9 billion while fares remain among the highest in Europe, that has seen 17 percent of local roads deteriorate, and that has cycled through nine Transport Secretaries in 16 years is not a department that has earned public confidence. The system keeps running. The question is why, after this much money and this many reforms, it does not run better.