Roger Whitfield, an independent local councillor in the West Country town of Portishead, is waiting anxiously to learn whether chancellor Rachel Reeves will make good on Labour’s investment pledges when she delivers her first Budget later this month.
Before the election, Whitfield was optimistic that his scenic waterfront town of 27,000 was on the cusp of clinching a long-promised rail link into the nearby city of Bristol. Work, he believed, would start in September.
Instead, the £152mn project to reopen a disused railway line and build a new station was suddenly put under review in July, after the newly elected Labour government warned it had to tackle a £22bn overspend that Reeves says she inherited from the Conservatives.