Highways and transportation infrastructure provide a vital network for all our communities, it supports the development of the whole economy and these arteries of our country need investment to ensure fitness to compete in the global economy.

Andrew Hugill, Director of Policy and Technical Affairs said:

“We welcome the confirmation of the £27bn that is due to be spent through RIS2 on our motorways and A roads. The government have indicated that in the spring they will publish a National Infrastructure Strategy which will set out plans for a transformation of the UK’s economic infrastructure. This announcement is a clear response to our calls for the government to provide a vision and certainty for the sector on key projects and programmes.”

“CIHT believe that there is a need to support a sustainable and healthy transport network. For local transport, we are pleased to see £1bn confirmed in the Transforming Cities Fund that includes £800m for bus and cycling infrastructure. The announcement of the £5bn to support buses and cycling in February and the national bus strategy that will be announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) show the importance of creating and maintaining a health transport network.”

“In our advice to government, we called for an increase in local road maintenance budgets and we welcome the increase to the funding available through the ‘pothole fund’. While this is a welcome step, we believe that there is a need to increase this significantly over and above this amount if we are to truly have a resilient local highway network. Our ‘Improving Local Highways’ project which will launch next week, will show how this can be implemented effectively.”

“CIHT believe that the CSR later in the year is an opportunity to ensure that we formalise a clear vision and strategy that sets out how transport will contribute to key policy areas. We will be looking to work with the Infrastructure and Projects Authority as they look at supply chain capacity and how industry can best deliver the government’s ambition.”

Significant announcements in the Budget today included:

Announcements on infrastructure:

• More than £600bn on infrastructure: broadband, rail, roads and housing.
• A new £2.5bn pothole fund – enough to fill 50 million potholes by the end of this Parliament.
• Over £27bn for the Strategic Road Network; Details of road schemes will be published by the Department for Transport in their Road Investment Strategy 2.
• The seven metro mayors outside of London will get London style funding settlements in addition to the Transforming Cities Fund.
• Nearly £1.1bn of allocations from the Housing Infrastructure Fund to build nearly 70,000 new homes in high demand areas across the country.

Announcements on protecting the environment:

• £500m to support the rollout of new rapid charging hubs, so that drivers are never more than 30 miles away from being able to charge up their car.
• Doubling investment in flood defences over the next six years to £5.2bn protecting over 300,000 properties.
• Over the next five years, planting around 30,000 hectares of trees and restore 35,000 hectares of peatland.

To see a further CIHT review of the budget, please see here

To see CIHT’s previous budget submission, please see here