Northumberland County Council has agreed to resubmit an outline business case (OBC) for the £60m Blyth Relief Road to the Department for Transport (DfT) after a surge in costs.
New council figures show that the cost of the scheme has risen from £46.8m in April 2023 to £59.9m.
It involves the construction of a new dual carriageway, dualling of the existing single carriageway along the length of the A1061 and the construction of a new single carriageway link.
The project was costed at £22.3m in 2014 and £32m in 2017, including the addition of £7.4m for ‘risk’, but in June last year the council said it was refreshing its OBC following DfT feedback.
A paper to the highway authority’s cabinet in January put the cost increase down to an increase in construction and property costs and the inclusion of Biodiversity Net Gain costs of £1m.
However, the benefit cost ratio (BCR) in the revised OBC sits at 1.96, with an adjusted BCR of 2.18, reflecting Treasury Green Book guidance on the relative value of benefits within the local context.
The scheme was named in the previous government’s Network North announcement as being eligible to receive 100% of OBC costs under the Major Road Network funding stream, which previously provided 85% of OBC costs.
As a result, the council removed an allocation of £7.02m from the Medium Term Financial Plan that it approved in February 2024.
Deputy leader Richard Wearmouth told the cabinet meeting: ‘We would hope that the current government will honour the commitment of the last government and pay for the full scheme.
‘We will continue to make representations to achieve that, not least because it would free up funding to do other things.’
So far, the council has allocated £720,000 to enable detailed design and development of the scheme and preparation of the planning application documentation, which is being carried out by AECOM.
