This morning, a new £19bn Crossrail line has been unveiled in London as the capital gears up to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee.
Four years late, £4bn over budget and still not completely finished, whilst the new Elizabeth Line is undoubtedly a welcome new arrival in the capital, the aplomb with which it has been announced has left a sour taste in some northerner’s mouths.
Amidst the rejection of plans for an underground here in Manchester and a series of derailed promises regarding the scrapped Eastern HS2 leg, which planned to connect the East Midlands with Leeds; whilst the capital hails its new ‘cathedral-like’ stations and the ‘longest trains ever seen’ in London, some northerners are feeling decidedly ticked off.
As the new Elizabeth Line was unveiled in London this morning, the Prime Minister tweeted that “it’s not just Londoners that will reap the rewards, but the whole country”.
The new Crossrail Line in the capital sees more than 70 miles of train lines and 10 new stations open, spanning London and the South East from Reading to Heathrow.
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The new 205-metre-long trains can each carry up to 1,500 passengers and will run every five minutes to start with, cutting the journey time for Londoners crossing the capital in half.
The project has already created 42km of new tunnels under central London, with the Prime Minister revealing last week that he already has a second £30bn London Crossrail 2 project in his sights.
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I’m so happy London’s new £18.8bn #ElizabethLine railway has opened. Meanwhile if you want to get from Leeds to Manchester in less than 1 hour and spend less than £15 you can go bloody swivel, the government hasn’t got money for that!
£9,000,000,000 for the Elizabeth line while the quickest train between Leeds and Manchester is still 53 mins to do 47 miles. Northern powerhouse plans scrapped. Disgrace.
However, whilst Londoners will be enjoying better connectivity than ever across the city over the Jubilee Bank Holiday weekend, here in the north of England it has just been announced that train services in and around Manchester will be ‘severely disrupted’.
Network Rail will complete a ‘major signalling overhaul’ in Manchester over the Jubilee weekend, seeing a large number of Manchester trains replaced by buses in order to help our trains ‘run on time’.
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As part of these upgrades, a 132-year-old signal box near Philips Park will be removed. Network Rail will also replace nearly 4km of track and secure over 2.8km of overhead wires.
As a result, passengers travelling between Leeds, Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Victoria, and Stalybridge over the weekend will likely suffer delays as services are re-directed and/or replaced with buses.
Makes me so happy when Elizabeth line posts say it's "12 trains per hour to begin" and then I look and there are 6ph Liverpool-Manchester and Manchester-Leeds
The ‘colossal upgrade’ to Northern rail is part of another delayed project, initially forecast to be completed in 2018.
A part of the Transpennine Route Upgrade, it was originally part of George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse Rail pledge, which also featured plans to upgrade Manchester’s Piccadilly and Oxford Road stations
Once labelled a ‘priority’ by the Prime Minister, this original Northern Powerhouse Rail line was envisioned as a 40-mile, high-speed route that would connect east to west between Manchester and Leeds via Bradford.
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It would have enabled more hourly trains to run between northern cities and allowed for shorter journeys on almost every important route, but the £36bn plan was ultimately rejected by Westminster for being too costly.
Here in Manchester, rail passengers have become quite used to travelling on cramped, overcrowded trains with reduced timetables – but it appears that the coverage of the new £19bn Elizabeth line is not going down well on social media today.
So much for #LevellingUp@grantshapps@michaelgove On a train from Leeds to Manchester. Absolutely rammed standing room only, and just one or 2 an hour. I heard that the £18bn Elizabeth line in London has 24 trains an hour. Thanks… just thanks…
Taking to Twitter, Mancs have not held back on voicing their opinions, with one person tweeting: “So excited for the Elizabeth line to improve Manchester! It’s what we’ve all been waiting for up here.”
Another said: “How is this good news for the ‘entire country’? Good news for London yes, but is theElizabeth Line going to mean a more frequent service between Lancaster and Barrow? Or more carriages on trains down to Manchester? Or more affordable rail fares nationwide?”
A third added: “£9,000,000,000 for the Elizabeth line while the quickest train between Leeds and Manchester is still 53 mins to do 47 miles. Northern powerhouse plans scrapped. Disgrace.”
A fourth said: “So the Elizabeth line opens 3years 6 months late at a cost of 18.8 billion but meanwhile in the north we can’t half a major route built between Sheffield and Manchester still??? Talk about levelling up.”
Another added: “New Elizabeth line is 100km. If you put a pin in central Leeds and drew a 100km radius, you could reach as far as Liverpool, Manchester, Lincoln and all coastal towns in the north east and west. WHY does London need a an inch of dazzling new infrastructure?”
Whilst a further person commented: “Nice to see the London based, The Queen Elizabeth line, which has cost the UK taxpayer £20billion is making national news. I look forward to using the service from the north where a trip to London costs £140 return or a trip to Manchester takes longer today than in 1965…”
The Department For Transport said in a statement: “We continue working towards delivering a rail network that is cleaner, greener and fairer to taxpayers, while boosting opportunity right across the country.
“Our work to date has seen 800 miles of electrification in just four years and the largest ever single investment with the £96bn Integrated Rail Plan. This will deliver improvements to the Midlands Main Line, as well as the completion of the Transpennine Route Upgrade.”
Feature image – Boris Johnson / Facebook
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Derelict Manchester office block to become ‘vital’ accommodation for homeless families
Emily Sergeant
A derelict former office block in Manchester is set to become vital accommodation for homeless families in the region.
Manchester City Council has announced that, subject to planning approval, new temporary accommodation for dozens of homeless families will be created on the site of a derelict former office block in south Manchester, off Nell Lane in Chorlton.
The Council acquired the 1.1 acre site last month with the support of the Government’s Local Authority Housing Fund.
The initiative – which is part of wider plans to boost the city’s stock of quality temporary accommodation – will see self-contained two-bedroom accommodation created for around 55 homeless families built where former NHS offices, Mauldeth House, currently stand.
Mauldeth House has been empty for several years now at this point, and had become somewhat of a ‘blight’ on the neighbourhood, attracting anti-social behaviour along the way and being targeted by squatters – but with the plans for the new accommodation, this could change for the better.
The site, and therefore the new accommodation, is said to be ‘ideally located’ for families, as it’s close to shops, schools, public transport, leisure facilities, and Chorlton Park.
The new accommodation will see families supported by a specialist team based on site to help them move on as quickly as possible into permanent settled tenancies, which is, of course, the long-term goal for many.
The Mauldeth House initiative is cited as being one example of the Council’s drive to increase its temporary accommodation stock across the city to reduce the number of out-of-area placements.
Other successful examples of this initiative include Mariana House in Whalley Range, and The Poplars in Rusholme.
It also comes after it was announced last month that homeless children in Greater Manchester, particularly those who are placed in temporary accommodation out of area for their school, will now get free bus travel to and from school.
“Mauldeth House is a great example of how we can put derelict properties to good use to benefit those experiencing homelessness, as well as making our neighbourhood look better,” explained Deputy Council Leader, Cllr Joanna Midgley.
“We are tackling homelessness on many fronts, the most important one being prevention, but we also need an increased supply of good quality temporary accommodation within the city so that if people do become homeless they are not uprooted from their social support networks.
“One of the ways we are doing this is through the innovative use of existing sites whether they are council owned or we are able to acquire them, as in the case of Mauldeth House.”
Featured Image – Manchester City Council
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Bolton woman who falsely accused 10 men of raping her has been jailed
Emily Sergeant
A woman from Bolton who falsely accused 10 different men of raping her over a six-year period has now been jailed.
Stacey Sharples, 31 from Farnworth in Bolton, pleaded guilty of 10 counts of perverting the course of justice in relation to reports against 10 separate men at Bolton Crown Court earlier last month (2 February 2026), before appearing in court again this week to be sentenced.
The investigation into Sharples was launched after the arrests and questioning of almost all these men, and following the pursuing of all relevant lines of enquiry, which consistently revealed evidence contrary to what had been disclosed by Sharples.
Greater Manchester Police (GMP) says investigations of this nature are ‘extremely rare’ and the decision to pursue Sharples as a suspect was ‘not one taken lightly’.
“However, it is our duty to act in the public interest and on the evidence and information we uncover and receive, which in this case demonstrated a continuous, wilful making of false allegations, knowing full well the consequences for each of the men involved,” GMP said in a statement following Sharples’ sentencing.
Of the allegations Sharples pleaded guilty to – of which were made over a six-year period between 2013 and 2019 – most of the men were arrested and spent time in custody, with some also undertaking intimate examinations, and almost all spending periods of time on police bail or released under investigation.
Statements from the men accused by Stacey Sharples / Credit: GMP
GMP says there’s ‘no doubt’ the reports and arrests have had an impact on these men, their sense of self and relationships, their wider networks, and how they move forward with their lives.
False accounts also undermine those who have genuinely experienced sexual violence.
Police say it also affects the confidence in the criminal justice system, and that the time spent investigating Sharples’ reports could have been put towards investigating ‘genuine reports of sexual offences’ instead.
Sharples has been sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison this week after pleading guilty to making false rape allegations.
Speaking following Sharples’ sentencing this week, Detective Sergeant Steven Gilliland, who investigated this case, said: “We took the allegations made by Stacey Sharples seriously, explored all lines of enquiry and swiftly made arrests or interviewed of all the men she accused.
“We gave her multiple opportunities to provide further explanation or information to us, after interviews with the men and subsequent evidence uncovered didn’t align with her first recollection, as we understand that trauma can impact how victims and survivors recount their experiences.
“Ultimately, as the evidence continued to demonstrate that the reports were untrue, coupled with the desire for justice from some of the men who had been falsely accused, it was right that we followed the evidence and pursued the individual who had actually committed a criminal offence.”
Georgina Pellant -
24th May 2022 
