City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements: confirmed delivery plans and funding allocations
Source: gov.uk (2025-03-17)

Letters to metro mayors and confirmed delivery plans for the city regions currently eligible for a share of the £5.7 billion City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements.

The City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements (CRSTS) programme is a £5.7 billion investment in local transport networks. It provides consolidated, long-term capital funding to 8 city regions across England through 5-year settlements from tax year 2022 to 2023 to 2026 to 2027.

Funding settlements

Settlements have been confirmed (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/city-region-sustainable-transport-settlements-confirmed-allocations) for the following Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) under CRSTS:

Letters confirming delivery plans

Letters from the Secretary of State for Transport to metro mayors confirming the delivery plans funded through their CRSTS allocations.

Delivery plans

The delivery plans agreed in July 2022 contain the list of schemes and milestones for each city region. Delivery plans have been agreed with government in line with the fund objectives and based on the plans put forward by city regions. Progress against planned milestones will be updated over the period (#updates).

Delivery plans have been agreed with approximately 10% of overprogramming, as it is likely that over the 5-year settlement period schemes may change in timing, scope or cost. City regions have flexibility to manage delivery within this overprogramming locally while retaining the required degree of government oversight.

City regions are responsible for sourcing locally any additional funding required to deliver overprogrammed scope.

Revised delivery plans 2024

MCAs were offered the opportunity to revise their CRSTS 1 delivery plans to ensure they remained realistic and achievable.

In addition, the overprogramming of delivery plans was increased from 10% to 25% to allow MCAs to develop pipelines for their future programmes

DfT assessed and agreed revised delivery plans in March 2024.

The revision process for Tees Valley Combined Authority’s CRSTS delivery plan is ongoing.

The North East Combined Authority was formed in May 2024 and has since been working with DfT to agree a CRSTS delivery plan for the region. The delivery plan is currently being finalised.

We will update this page once this work is finalised.

Aims of the settlements

The National Infrastructure Strategy (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-infrastructure-strategy) committed to investments in local transport networks to improve productivity in our largest cities. The CRSTS programme aims to deliver transformational change through investments in public and sustainable transport infrastructure in some of England’s largest city regions. CRSTS funding is targeted at the following objectives:
- driving growth and productivity
- decarbonising transport
- levelling up services and areas
Guidance was published in 2021 (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/city-region-sustainable-transport-settlements-developing-proposals/city-region-sustainable-transport-settlements-guidance-for-mayoral-combined-authorities) to support eligible city regions in preparing funding proposals for settlements.

Timeline
- 2020: funding announced for 5-year settlements for 8 MCAs at Spring Budget
- 2021: indicative allocations announced for 7 MCAs at Spending Review
- 2022: funding allocations and delivery plans confirmed for 7 MCAs
- 2023: MCAs given the opportunity to revise their delivery plans in response to inflationary pressures
- 2024: revised delivery plans approved
- 2027: end of CRSTS 1 funding period