Government hands out £350m loan to keep delayed Crossrail project going
The Government has rushed to the aid of the delayed Crossrail project with a £350m short-term loan to keep work on track.
Transport for London (TfL) announced the loan on Friday, which it said was needed to continue construction work on the delayed Elizabeth line.
In July the rail minister Jo Johnson announced that the project needed an extra £600m in funding, taking its total cost from £14.8bn to £15.4bn.
Over a month later it was announced the line, scheduled to open in December, would be delayed until autumn 2019.
Both Crossrail Ltd and TfL have been working to plug the funding gap and the Government has now intervened to give London mayor Sadiq Khan a £350m loan.
TfL said: “The Department for Transport will provide a short-term loan of £350m to London, which will enable Crossrail Limited to continue its construction work and vital testing at pace to open the Elizabeth line to passengers as quickly as possible.”
In a statement to Parliament, Johnson said: "As an interim measure, we are announcing that £350 million of short term repayable financing will be made available to the Mayor for the year 2018/19.
"This will ensure that full momentum is maintained behind Crossrail."
He added that discussions over further funding were ongoing along with a separate review into both Crossrail's governance and its finance and commercial position.
"This project is already delivering benefits for the whole of the UK through its cross-country supply chain and its UK built train fleet.
"When open, Crossrail will be transformative and carry up to 200 million passengers a year, delivering £42 billion of investment into the UK economy," he added.
Earlier this month members of the London Assembly accused Sadiq Khan of misleading the public over what he knew about the nine-month Crossrail delay.
The Assembly's transport committee said the accounts it had heard regarding the delay had been "partial and contradictory".
Khan has repeatedly said he knew nothing of the delay until a meeting with the Crossrail board on 29 August – two days before it was announced the project would be delayed until autumn 2019.
But the committee pointed to a number of meetings between Crossrail and the DfT from 19 July in which they argue the delays would have been made clear.
It is not yet known what the full financial cost to the delay will be but TfL commissioner Mike Brown has admitted the transport body would miss out on £20m additional revenue through ticket fares.
In a letter to the London Assembly's transport committee, Khan's deputy mayor for transport said TfL would lose £10m in commercial income, or advertising.