Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR)
Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) is the Government's plan to provide more reliable and frequent services between the North of England's key economic centres. NPR forms the transport backbone of the Northern Growth Strategy and will deliver a railway linking Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield and York with regular onward services to Newcastle, Hull and Chester for North Wales connections.
NPR will be delivered in the following three phases:
- Adding upgrades and electrical lines east of the Pennines (on the Leeds–Bradford, Sheffield–Leeds, Leeds–York routes).
- A new Liverpool–Manchester route via new stations at Warrington Bank Quay (Low Level) and Manchester Airport.
- Further improvements across the Pennines including to routes between Manchester and Leeds, Manchester and Bradford and Manchester and Sheffield.
The High Speed Rail (Crewe – Manchester) Bill
The High Speed Rail (Crewe–Manchester) Bill has been adapted to help deliver the second phase of NPR.
This will be the section of the original HS2 route from the Cheshire parish of Millington and Rostherne to Manchester Piccadilly, via a new station at Manchester Airport. The route is known as NPR's Manchester Connection.
For further information about the bill, please click here.
Additional Provisions
It's common for changes to be made to the proposals in a hybrid bill because of design refinements and as discussions with landowners, occupiers and other parties take place.
These changes are presented in a set of documents called 'Additional Provisions', or APs, which detail each amendment. APs are accompanied by an Environmental Statement (ES) that reports the significant environmental effects of the amendments in the relevant areas.
The first AP (AP1) was deposited in Parliament on 6 July 2022. The Supplementary Environmental Statement 1 (SES1) was published alongside AP1.
AP2 was deposited in Parliament on 3 July 2023 alongside its Environmental Statements – the AP2 ES and the SES2.
To make the changes to deliver only the Northern Powerhouse Rail section in the Bill, a further Supplementary Environmental Assessment will take place to assess the expected effects of the Bill adaptation. A further Additional Provision may also be required. Those documents will be published on this website when they are available.
Information Papers
You can view a series of Information Papers here that have been produced to explain the commitments made in the Bill and the Environmental Minimum Requirements (EMRs) and how they will be applied to the design and construction of the Proposed Scheme. The EMRs are published here. They also provide information about the Proposed Scheme itself, the powers contained in the Bill and how particular decisions about the Proposed Scheme have been reached.
Future connections
The Government has also confirmed it intends to complete a new line between Birmingham and Manchester. This is not included in this bill, and work on the line would begin after the three phases of NPR have been completed. However, the new line will be considered as part of how NPR will be built.