Plans to build a long-awaited £2.5bn Leeds tram system are at risk of never happening as the project is already embroiled in delays and cost rows with echoes of the doomed HS2 project, insiders have warned.
Just six months after the first potential routes were unveiled, there are already signs the project is in serious trouble, with Labour’s Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin, having to admit the intended start date will need to be pushed back several years to the late 2030s.
The i Paper understands a recent Treasury-backed inspection of the project has found a number of “concerns”.
Meanwhile, insiders have raised eyebrows at the amount of money that West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) has already spent without having agreed a final route, designed trams or laid any track.
In October 2025, the authority said it expected to have spent almost £81m of the £200m it was awarded in 2021 to make a start on the project.
This included £31m on “design and environmental” work with the WYCA saying it has already carried out around 5,000 surveys on “bats, birds and badgers”.
Long history of false dawns over Leeds trams
Calls to bring trams back to Leeds – the largest city in Europe without a mass transit system – go back more than four decades.
Plans have twice reached an advanced stage, only to stall, most recently in 2016 when a £250m trolley bus network was cancelled.
When the country elected a Labour Prime Minister who went to university in Leeds, Sir Keir Starmer, and a Chancellor who is the MP for Leeds West, Rachel Reeves, it looked as if the stars may finally have aligned.
The Leeds tram scheme has been delayed until the late 2030s (Source: West Yorkshire Combined Authority)With a focus on economic growth and investment, they threw their own personal backing behind Brabin with a pledge of more than £2bn to help make the new tram system a reality and “spades in the ground” by 2028.
But after so many false dawns – and Labour’s lack of progress with other transport projects in the North, such as HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail – critics have been left questioning whether a Leeds tram system will ever materialise.
Insiders and observers have also told The i Paper there are echoes of the farce surrounding HS2.
Treasury review will remain ‘confidential’
On the one hand, those in West Yorkshire blame the delay on London-centric civil servants failing to recognise the value of investing in the North and refusing to allow local leaders to drive the project forward themselves.
December’s announcement came after inspectors with the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (Nista), a new quango led by Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones, came to review the tram project in September.
No details of what the inspectors found have been shared publicly and a Treasury spokesperson told The i Paper the review was carried out on the basis that it would remain confidential “to ensure everyone involved in a project feels able to speak honestly about the project and any concerns about it.”
The WYCA says it will reveal a summary of the review’s findings at a meeting later this month.
Guidance issued by the government when Nista was set up last year said review teams should grade projects either green for “highly likely’ to be successfully delivered, amber if it is facing “significant issues” or red if it looks “unachievable”.
However, The i Paper understands the Leeds tram project has not been given a “RAG” rating at this stage.
Instead, the review team has set out a series of recommendations to the combined authority.
It is believed there was particular concern around West Yorkshire’s attempts to try and “twin track” developing their business case and design the tram system at the same time.
The authority has ultimately had to accept that it will have to slow the process down.
The project has been backed by Brabin and Reeves (Photo: Christopher Furlong/Getty)A source familiar with Nista thinking said they do not believe the tram project is likely to be graded ‘Green’ in future, but added: “I don’t think it will be the Combined Authority’s fault – to me it looks like classic Treasury thinking, trying to spread the cost as best they can. It’s a lack of ambition.
“They are horrendously risk-averse; they will assure the project to death.
“A central body should not be trying to manage a local tram project; it’s crazy.”
‘Inescapable bias towards London’
Tom Forth, co-founder of Leeds-based tech company The Data City, was among those to react with fury to the tram delay and believes the national government and institutions are primarily to blame.
“They have centralised all power and money in the UK into a central blob that cannot build things and which seems inescapably biased towards London and South East England, where it overwhelmingly lives and works,” he said.
There are questions about why the WYCA has spent so much money – up to £120m – at such an early stage of the project.
Documents obtained by The i Paper show the contract solely for “environmental impact assessments”, which was awarded to engineering firm Jacobs in 2023, is worth £10m.
Insiders the fear could face similar delays and rising costs to the beleaguered HS2 project (Photo: Ryan Jenkinson/Getty Images)It comes after a £100m ‘bat tunnel’ which has been built for HS2 prompted outrage and led to Starmer promising to take on the “blockers” in order to get Britain building during this Parliament.
Forth said he is not surprised by the obstacles and mounting costs facing the Leeds tram – but sees it as part of a pattern afflicting British transport projects.
“It’s not just West Yorkshire, it’s an insane process,” he added.
“We have seen it fail for HS2, we have seen it fail for lots of stuff, so what other outcome is there?”
‘Money spent but not a lot to show for it’
Think-tank Britain Remade recently published a report calling for Britain to build more tramways, which included a detailed blueprint for Leeds.
Head of policy Sam Dumitriu said the slow progress and soaring costs in West Yorkshire are symptomatic of the country’s struggles to build infrastructure, especially when it comes to transport.
“Money has been spent but there’s not a lot to show for it,” he told The i Paper.
“We didn’t need to spend £80m to come up with a rough idea of what the route should look like.
“It feels like a lot of the problem comes from who’s spending the money. When you’re spending someone else’s money, you’re not raising it yourself through taxes, you don’t have a clearly defined pot and the need to get on with it, you’re in a situation where you need to produce as much paperwork as possible to show you’re spending the money well.
“There’s not that trust for you to get on with it; as a result, you end up with this process that costs so much more than our European counterparts.
“I don’t think there’s the goodwill that there was before – people are demanding that there’s something to show for all the warm words and at the moment we don’t have much beyond 5,000 environmental surveys.”
Lines would connect Leeds and Bradford under the £2.5bn project (Photo: WYCA)Dumitriu compared the current crisis with Dijon in France, where local leaders were able to plan and build a new 12-mile tramway in just four years at a cost of £460m.
“That is because power is controlled at a very different level,” he added.
“The WYCA has to ask for permission from the government every step of the way – as a result, it’s extremely slow.
“The idea is that Nista changing the timeline will make it more likely for the [Leeds] project to succeed – I don’t think that’s the case. I think it’s less likely to happen than it was a few weeks ago.”
Labour mayor ‘deeply frustrated’
This week, Brabin appeared on BBC Radio Leeds for a live phone-in and spent almost the entire hour having to defend the state of the tram project.
At times, she admitted she was “deeply frustrated” and that she was “banging my head on the desk before Christmas”.
Gareth Forest, chair of Better Buses for West Yorkshire, questioned why Brabin was not being more vocal in her criticism of her party’s government and suggested she was being “mugged off”.
Brabin denied this and insisted West Yorkshire has “100 per cent support from government.”
She told The i Paper: “We take the government at its word in wanting to be the builders, not the blockers, which is why we took an innovative approach to speed up delivery of our mass transit project in the spirit of devolution.
“Britain’s track record on delivering major infrastructure is woeful, and I’m glad the government has agreed to look at how red tape can be streamlined to deliver better connections across the country and boost economic growth.
“This will be an infrastructure project of national significance – so it is vital we move forward on delivering the project in lockstep with the Government. We recognise the importance of taking time to get this right and we remain committed to having spades in the ground by 2028.”
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Transport minister Keir Mather was asked about whether the government will do more to support West Yorkshire deliver trams by MPs this week.
He said: “The Government fully supports the Mayor of West Yorkshire’s ambition to deliver mass transit in the region.
“People in West Yorkshire have waited too long for better transport infrastructure and too many promises from the previous Government have been broken. We are determined to put that right.”
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