10 Downing Street adviser pushed for bus gate on Mill Road bridge in Cambridge

An edict from 10 Downing Street was behind the condition that the Combined Authority “progress” work to close Mill Road bridge to most private motor vehicles in return for £4.295million bus funding, a Freedom of Information Act investigation has revealed.

In an email released to the Cambridge Independent, Andrew Gilligan, who was special adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and had previously been his cycling commissioner for London, said the condition should be made “completely explicit” to the Combined Authority.

And he rewrote the Department for Transport’s (DfT) original wording on a list of conditions for bus funding being given to the authority to include the demand that the bus gate be reinstated, following its trial introduction during the pandemic.

In the November 2021 email, Mr Gilligan told the DfT: “This still doesn’t quite incorporate my suggested wording – it’s not completely explicit that it’s a condition of this funding. So how about: ‘As stated in the National Bus Strategy in March, all funding for bus improvements – including this funding – will depend on your willingness to implement ambitious bus priority measures. As a condition of this funding, we therefore expect to see [a] bus lane on any road where there is a frequent bus service, congestion and the physical space to install one, beginning with but not limited to the roads on which the zero-emission buses funded in this agreement will operate. Bus lanes should be full-time and as continuous as possible... etc, etc’.

“In the Cambridge letter, we should also add: ‘In particular, you should commit to progress the reinstatement of the bus gate on Mill Road, with access also for Blue Badge holders, as committed to by the mayor in late September’.”

Mr Gilligan has some knowledge of the city. He is the author of a report for the National Infrastructure Commission called ‘Running out of road: Investing in cycling in Cambridge, Milton Keynes and Oxford’.

But the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority (CPCA) has no official power to install the bus gate, as that falls under the remit of Cambridgeshire County Council, which is the highways authority.

And in spite of the clear direction received by the CPCA from the Department for transport, a spokesperson for the Combined Authority has said: “No representations were made to the county council on this.”

The county council has explained: “The CPCA doesn’t have the powers or the authority to implement a Traffic Regulation Order and no influence was made on the county council.”

Councillors decided in October to progress the Traffic Regulation Order to impose the bus gate after consultation showed majority support among respondents. An earlier order was quashed on technical grounds by the High Court.

The £4,295,000 government funding was given to the Combined Authority under the Zero Emission Bus Regional Area Scheme (ZEBRA) for “the delivery of electric buses and associated infrastructure”.

After winning the government funding in September 2021, the Combined Authority acknowledged publicly that the government wanted a “meaningful commitment” and that it would work with local authorities. Whitehall had been “disappointed with the outcomes of previous schemes and understandably withheld funding”, it noted.

The mayor, Labour’s Dr Nik Johnson, said at the time: “I recognise the previous controversies surrounding schemes such as the Mill Road bridge closure and the Crescent Bridge active travel schemes. I support the direction of travel around restricting traffic movements in these areas, subject to a full and meaningful consultation which will deliver the improvements in air quality and lifestyle, which are so important to my ambition to placing public health at the heart of all policy.”

A letter from the Department for Transport in January 2022, when the previous Tory government was in power, stated that Dr Johnson had agreed to pursue the bus gate on Mill Road bridge as a condition of the grant funding. The letter added that the £4.295m funding for the ZEBRA bus improvement project was dependent on the mayor’s willingness to “implement ambitious bus priority measures” and that “in particular, the CPCA should commit to progress the reinstatement of the busgate on Mill Road... as committed to by the mayor in late September.”

This followed an experimental closure of the bridge during the Covid lockdowns under government active travel measures, which was subsequently reversed.

However, at the CPCA board meeting on 16 October this year, a member of the public, Will Bannell, asked Dr Johnson about the link that had been identified in a letter from the Department of Transport to the chief executive of the CPCA dated 7 January, 2022. Mr Bannell, who has been campaigning against the restrictions, asked the mayor why he made such a firm commitment to the Department for Transport.

The mayor responded: “I am able to confirm that no such commitment was made. There was press coverage of the meeting at the time on this, but no written communications have been identified. Mill Road was not discussed or minuted in any ZEBRA-related (meeting) attended by Combined Authority officers with the DfT.”

But documents relating to the Combined Authority’s management of the project show that failure to close the bridge was seen as a specific risk to the ZEBRA bus project. The project documents contain a risk register listing issues that could delay or pose a problem for the ZEBRA bus project. One of those risks being monitored by CPCA officers was ‘Delay due to Mill Road bus gate’.

Cllr Anna Bailey, leader of the Conservatives on East Cambridgeshire District Council and a Combined Authority board member, said: “I am aware that in regular project progress reports submitted by the CPCA to DfT, the risk register, which analyses risks to delivery of the ZEBRA project, a risk that was being regularly monitored, documented and reported back to DfT, was described as ‘Delay due to Mill Road bus gate’.

“If there was no link between the CPCA and the mayor agreeing to progress the Mill Road bus gate in order to obtain the award of £4.29m to deliver the ZEBRA project, as the mayor has stated, why on Earth is it included in the project updates from CPCA to DfT and cited as a risk to the delivery of the ZEBRA project?”

A Combined Authority spokesperson said: “The Combined Authority’s role was to manage the delivery of new electric buses as part of the ZEBRA project. Highway measures like the Mill Road bus gate fall under the county council’s jurisdiction. The Combined Authority was the first in the country to deliver an entire ZEBRA programme, and did so on time and on budget.

“The Mill Road bus gate was noted as a potential risk to bus operations. The risk highlighted was that if there were significant delays or issues with Mill Road, it might affect the efficient operation of some of the buses. This was a minor risk – rated very low – focused on how the buses might be deployed if there were disruptions to the planned charging infrastructure or route operations. This was reported to DFT as part of the risk register.

“The Department for Transport has underlined that it has not held the Combined Authority to any ‘outstanding delivery commitments’ in relation to the ZEBRA bus funding.

The DfT said in a statement: “The details of the grant which CPCA agreed to were under the previous government. The expectations set by the government at the time reflected the policy priorities of that administration including expectations in the National Bus Strategy concerning the implementation of ambitious bus priority measures. In that context, the then government expected commitments that it considered had already been made by relevant local politicians, such as in relation to the Mill Lane bus gate, to be implemented.

“ZEBRA funding was not allocated specifically for the purpose of installing a bus gate on Mill Road. Also, since the project’s completion in July 2023, the Department has not requested CPCA to fulfil any outstanding delivery commitments.”

The confusion over the project – with government officials appearing to impose demands on an authority that did not have the power to act on them – will be seen by those pushing for reform as further evidence that Cambridgeshire’s complex arrangement of local authorities needs streamlining. The government is due to unveil plans for further devolution that could impact the county.