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Westminster’s grip on transport powers is holding back England’s cities 

• New analysis reveals English cities are a fraction as well-served by tram and metro as their European twin cities despite having comparable populations.
• Cities including Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol, and Birmingham have zero or limited mass transit, while their twins in France and Germany carry tens of millions of journeys per year.
• Britain Remade is calling on Sir Keir Starmer to use the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill to give all 14 directly elected mayors the power to approve, fund and deliver transport projects themselves.

New analysis by Britain Remade has exposed the scale of the gap between England’s major cities and their European twins. As a result, the campaign group is calling on the Government to give England’s 14 directly elected mayors the powers they need to change this.

The data, drawn from tram, metro, and light rail systems across Europe, paints a damning picture: English city-regions twinned with well-connected European cities are being systematically left behind. Not because of a lack of ambition from local leaders, but because those leaders are forced to go cap in hand to Westminster for every penny and every planning permission for major infrastructure projects.

Britain Remade, which campaigns to make it quicker, easier and cheaper to build economy boosting infrastructure, is calling on Sir Keir Starmer to amend the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, currently going through Parliament, to give metro mayors the power to approve, fund and deliver transport projects themselves.

Leeds is the largest city in Western Europe without a mass public transit system. By contrast the tram network in its twin city Lille carries 108 million people a year or 92 tram journeys per person per year; its other twin, Dortmund, operates 47 miles of track serving 122 stations. Leeds carries zero journeys and has zero miles of track.

Bristol, and the wider West of England mayoral region, with a population of over one million people, has zero miles of tram track, zero stations and zero tram journeys. Its twin city Bordeaux, with a population of 1.3 million, operates 48 miles of modern tram, serving 130 stations, with 79 journeys per person per year. Plans for a Bristol tram have been discussed for decades, but without the powers to act, the West of England Mayor cannot build it without the green light from Whitehall.

While the West Midlands Metro is made up of 15 miles of track serving 33 stations, Birmingham’s twin Lyon has 66 miles of underground track and 150 stations. This system means Lyon’s metro is able to carry around 260 million passengers each year, equivalent to roughly 111 journeys per person. While its West Midlands counterpart carries just 9 million people, or just under 3 trips per person annually.

Greater Manchester operates the one of the largest tram networks in England with 64 miles of track and 99 stations. Yet its twin city Chemnitz, a German city of just 246,000 people, a fraction of Greater Manchester’s three million, runs a denser network per resident with 7.7 miles of track per 100,000 people against Manchester’s 2.1, and 22.4 stations per capita against Manchester’s 3.3. Even one of England’s best-served cities outside London is outclassed by a mid-sized German one.

Britain Remade is calling on the Government to amend the Bill to give all 14 directly elected mayors the power to approve transport infrastructure projects without requiring Whitehall sign-off, to access infrastructure financing on competitive terms, and to deliver projects end-to-end without repeated Treasury reviews and ministerial intervention.

This is how successful countries do it. France, Germany and the Netherlands have long trusted local leaders to plan, fund and deliver the infrastructure they need. The result is clear: their cities are better connected, their residents take more journeys, and their infrastructure gets built.

Sam Richards, CEO of Britain Remade, said:

“Directly elected mayors understand their regions far better than distant officials in Whitehall ever can. They see the bottlenecks, the missed opportunities, and the projects that would genuinely unlock growth. Yet despite this, they are still forced to go cap in hand to Westminster, navigating delays and bureaucracy just to deliver basic infrastructure.

“This overcentralisation is a major reason Britain struggles to build. It stifles ambition, slows progress, and leaves major cities like Leeds - still the largest in Western Europe without a mass transit system - lagging behind.

“If Keir Starmer is serious about growth, he should trust mayors and give them the powers they need to build.”