New Crossrail doubts

The £11billion Crossrail project suffered a serious setback today with new doubts about how it will be financed.

London's leading property developers said they were strongly against Ken Livingstone's favoured method for raising the money.

The opposition raises fresh questions about the chances of the long mooted trans-London rail link ever being built.

The Treasury has made it clear the project could only be financed with a major contribution from the private sector.

The Mayor ' s favoured schemes is to levy a tax on the

uplift in property values when

the east-west railway has been built. However, senior property figures rejected this as "opaque and incomprehensible" in a pamphlet published today by the Social Market Foundation think-tank.

In the publication leading members of the British Property Federation - including Tesco, developer Canary Wharf and agent FPD Savills - said it would be impossible to judge whether a change in property values could be directly attributed to the construction of Crossrail.