ACTION rather than sound bites are needed for the Government to live up to its promise to build a Northern Powerhouse and devolve spending to the regions.

That was the widespread reaction to the Chancellor's measures aimed at boosting infrastructure spending across the North to enhance road, rail and air connections.

Hopes that the High Speed 3 superfast rail line will come as far as Newcastle were dashed as George Osborne confirmed only Leeds and and Manchester links will be funded at this stage.

Much-needed upgrades to stretches of the A69 and A66 will be looked into but no firm spending plans are in place.

More than half of the transport improvements mentioned in the Budget had previously been revealed in the Autumn Statement.

Anna Turley, Labour MP for Redcar, dismissed what she called "some flashy infrastructure announcements" to spend billions on London's Crossrail scheme, high speed railways, and motorways.

"None of this came north of Leeds, and once again the Northern Powerhouse is exposed as an empty, meaningless slogan. As the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said today, the Chancellor has to stop just putting a high-vis jacket and helmet on and actually start delivering on the infrastructure we need," she added.

Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland Labour MP Tom Blenkinsop said: “For all the hot air, none of the much vaunted improvements to transport infrastructure will benefit Teesside, with the bulk of the cash going to London - yet again.”

Rob Charlton, of Newcastle architecture and technology business Space Group, feared yesterday's announcement was "very Manchester centric".

He added: "I have a huge concern that the North-East could be left behind and become a backwater. There is support for the North West, Yorkshire and connections to Birmingham, while Scotland is making its own investment which leaves the North-East as a struggling region.

“Improving the East coast main line is a priority and potentially continuing the new link to York.”

Airport chiefs were dismayed that Westminster once again failed to match plans by the Scottish government to cut air taxes. David Laws, Newcastle Airport's chief executive, feared it could tempt more passengers north of the Border. and urged the government to tackle the problem or risk thousands of North-East jobs.

The political party Yorkshire First which wants greater powers for the county of Yorkshire said the Chancellor’s “warm words” for the North were not matched by his actions.

Its leader Richard Carter said: "What Yorkshire really needs is to be able to set, decide on and deliver our own priorities, rather than rely on the goodwill of London-based politicians.

"It seems George Osborne is more interested in recycling previous announcements to get good media coverage than actually investing real money in Yorkshire's infrastructure."

Dr Laurence Ferry, Associate Professor in Accounting at Durham University Business School and an expert in local government accountability, warned that the drive towards devolution could squeeze local Government finances even further.

Dr Ferry said: “Local authorities will be completely self-funding by 2020, but raising the threshold for business rate relief outlined in the Budget could result in them losing a significant amount of revenue.

“This comes on top of cuts of 79 per cent in council funding since 2010 and will accelerate the trend towards outsourcing and privatisation of local public services, which studies have shown challenge democratic accountability.

“The Chancellor’s plans for new regional and sub-regional bodies will take responsibility for many public functions that were previously undertaken by local Government. Most of the public do not understand this emerging, asymmetric and complex tier of governance and only one individual within each city-region – the mayor – will be democratically accountable.

“Mr Osborne stressed that he has challenged the illusion of local democracy by getting rid of ring-fencing of local authority funds and passing more control of funding to local authorities. In particular, he highlighted he would pass full control over business rates, but at the same time announced business rates relief was more than doubling for small and medium sized businesses.”