In response to the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Director General, Nick Baveystock, said: “Clearly government has heeded the advice of many across the industry to increase capital expenditure on infrastructure and get ‘shovel ready’ road schemes moving – demonstrating to investors that the National Infrastructure Plan (NIP) is leading to visible activity. The danger however, as with the £5bn capital boost announced this time last year, is that this will fail to materialise and breed further scepticism. The Highways Agency will have a crucial role to play here, accelerating the delivery of the schemes while still ensuring they deliver value for money.
“Progressing short term projects to stimulate jobs and growth is vital, but it is important to remember hat the NIP was intended as a long term plan, with 70% of investment to come from the private sector. We’ve seen a raft of potentially useful initiatives to help facilitate that - around pensions, planning, guarantees, ownership and funding arrangements and we also now have a pipeline of future projects. We in the industry need to keep a close eye on how these initiatives are progressing and be ready to work with government to propose new ideas if they aren’t working.
“I’m therefore pleased that Paul Deighton’s first duty as a Treasury Minister will be to be produce an assessment of Whitehall’s ability to deliver infrastructure and look forward to contributing to this review.”
“Glen Owen, Regional Director for the ICE East of England - said that he welcomed the £150m announced this afternoon for the J30 M25 improvement works and hoped that construction of this scheme can start as soon as possible - well before the 2015 start date announced earlier this year.
Glen said that the £127m for the A5-M1 new link road was great news and this should make it more likely that this well supported scheme can start on site before 2014. He also welcomed confirmation that Cambridge has been chosen as one of the eight English cities to be awarded cash under the second wave of the Government’s Urban Broadband Fund.”
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