Chancellor Rachel Reeves has almost doubled the amount given to Transport for London for major infrastructure projects, reports Noah Vickers, Local Democracy Reporter

The government’s budget means that Transport for London (TfL) can begin “exploring” the replacement of trains on the Bakerloo line, Sadiq Khan has said.

The London mayor also confirmed exclusively to the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the capital has been allocated £100m of the Chancellor’s £500m top-up to the England-wide affordable homes programme.

City Hall Conservatives claimed however that the budget was “a slap in the face for Londoners” and that the mayor “urgently needs to up his game”.

“My focus today has obviously been the fantastic announcement in relation to the capital investment in public transport in London,” said Khan, referring to the news that Transport for London (TfL) will receive £485m over the next financial year to cover major infrastructure projects.

The mayor had asked last year in the autumn statement for £569m in TfL capital funding from the previous chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, but he only received £250m.

Khan had said this year that he was asking for “north of” £250m, explaining that he was asking for a lower minimum amount due to the “£22bn black hole” which the current Labour chancellor, Rachel Reeves, claimed earlier this year to have identified in the public finances.

“This announcement by the government of an almost doubling of our capital investment [compared with last year] means that we can maintain, renew and grow public transport in London,” the mayor said.

“It means that we can now say to our manufacturers [that] we want all the trains for the Piccadilly Line that we originally envisaged, [and] we want more trains for the Elizabeth Line [too].”

As well as improving the signalling on the District and Metropolitan lines, enabling more frequent trains, he added: “We can now order the trams that South London desperately needs, but also make sure we have the full provision of trains for the Docklands Light Railway.

“Really importantly, we can also now properly explore the possibility of new trains on the Bakerloo Line.”

However, Khan was still unable to say when those new Bakerloo Line trains could get up and running on London Underground.

The current trains date from 1972, and are the oldest rolling stock in regular passenger service anywhere in the UK.

“One of the things TfL doesn’t want to do is spend a huge amount of money, effort, resources on this work, if there’s no possibility of the trains being ordered in the foreseeable future,” the mayor explained.

“Now TfL have the confidence – we’ve got this [financial] year, 2025/26, this huge capital investment, with the possibility of a multi-year deal [covering future financial years], there’s now the motivation to do this piece of work, rather than work being done that’s wasted.”

The budget did not mention funding for the proposed Bakerloo Line extension down from Elephant and Castle into south-east London.

On housing, Reeves has announced an additional £500m towards the current affordable homes programme, set up by the previous Tory government.

The £11.5bn, England-wide programme runs until March 2026 and London had already been allocated £4bn of it.

Khan had made the case that London should receive £100m of that extra £500m, and he confirmed on Wednesday (30th) that the Treasury had granted his request – bringing the capital’s total to £4.1bn.

City Hall had already been working towards a goal of delivering somewhere between 23,900 and 27,200 affordable properties over the course of the programme, but Mr Khan was unable to say how many additional homes the extra £100m would help deliver.

“You can’t really determine how many homes that will build until we have the conversations with the providers, councils […] In due course, we’ll be announcing the revised figure,” he said.

Khan insisted Wednesday’s budget had been “the best one I’ve heard as mayor, and I’ve been the mayor since 2016”.

But Neil Garratt, the leader of City Hall Conservatives, said Reeves’ fiscal announcements were “a slap in the face for Londoners and a defeat for mayor Khan’s claims to be sticking up for London”.

He added: “To avoid embarrassing his own colleagues, the mayor has already quietly dropped most of his asks of government before the Budget, yet the Labour chancellor has given him even less.

“London is a jewel in the crown of our national life. That we have lost out in this important budget is a snub to our mayor and a sign of the lack of trust that this government has in him.

“I said last month he should have been at the Labour conference fighting for London, but he chose to jet off to New York to hob-nob with the UN. The mayor may be serving out his last years in office, but he urgently needs to up his game or London will continue to lose out.”

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