This grand old Victorian tunnel offers a golden opportunity to create an inclusive greenway, suitable for all ages and abilities, connecting communities between Bradford and Halifax in West Yorkshire.

In 2020, Grant Shapps, then Transport Secretary, stopped custodian National Highways from infilling parts of the tunnel and instead ordered it to be retained for future transport use. Now National Highways has managed to convince the Labour government that blocking the tunnel off is the best way forward.

We need your help to take the first step towards challenging this damaging decision, to stop Labour being the ‘blockers’ to our greenway proposal.

A positive vision

For 12 years, we’ve been making the case for the 1.4-mile long Queensbury Tunnel to be repurposed. It was an audacious engineering feat, taking four years to build and claiming the lives of ten men.

Earlier this year, Sustrans - the walking and cycling charity - found that the greenway would deliver:

"£3 in social, economic and tourism benefits for every £1 spent"

This represents high value-for-money, far greater than many of the road projects which the government has recently committed to and at a fraction of the cost.

The route would offer a realistic alternative to car journeys on badly congested roads for those making work trips between Bradford and Halifax, whilst the magnificent landscapes of Brontë Country would attract leisure users and visitors. What’s not to like?

National Highways cannot be trusted

National Highways has always wanted to abandon the tunnel by partly infilling it and sealing the entrances. The last government stopped them from doing this; instead:

"£7.2m was spent strengthening the tunnel and making it safe for future use"

Now though, the state-owned roads company has convinced the Labour government into agreeing to 'block' the tunnel and permanently end any hopes of the greenway being built. The government hasn’t revealed the evidence on which the decision is based, except to say “safety risks need to be addressed”.

Given the tunnel was strengthened a few years ago, it’s inconceivable that the threat to public safety has increased by any meaningful extent. What we do know is that the government will be spending millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to wreck our dreams.

It seems that Sir Keir Starmer’s claim that Labour will be the “builders not the blockers” is just a sham.

Ups and downs

The government claims “there are less costly greenway options” which do not use the tunnel. But there is actually only one other option on the table - developed as part of the Sustrans study - that’s twice as long as the flat tunnel route, involves 500 feet of climbing and takes people on-road through the junction of two busy A-roads. There’s considerable uncertainty around its cost and deliverability.

Sustrans describes it as “valuable for the purposes of comparison”, but

“highly compromised with a poor user experience and no heritage benefits"

It would only be useful for committed cyclists and would not be safe or attractive for families or visitors.

It’s clear the government has made its decision without understanding all the facts. We are urging it to work with us to look at all the evidence before proceeding.

Next steps

We are exploring whether there are grounds to challenge the Minister’s decision through a Judicial Review. Our solicitors, Leigh Day, have been involved in similar legal cases and have kindly agreed to work for us at a hugely discounted rate.

"We need to act fast"

Our initial target of £1,300 is for our lawyers to write to the government, as soon as possible, requesting further information about the decision to block the tunnel, and to assess any response. If there are grounds for challenge, the next stage would be to draft a pre-application letter setting out why we think the decision is challengeable. The cost of these two initial phases is £6,500. We hope this will be enough to make the government see sense, but if we have to go the whole way, we’ll need to raise over £60,000.

Thank you for reading our story. We’ve worked hard over many years to reach a point where local stakeholders and politicians understand the potential benefits of the greenway and support its development. We’ve already climbed a mountain bigger than the one the tunnel passes through. What National Highways and the government are seeking to do will close the door on our efforts forever.

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Thank you for your support.