He was asked what assurances he could offer that transport, infrastructure and mobility will become more front and centre after attention moves on from the current discussions around Britain’s imminent departure from the European Union.

In recent times, the Minister replied, “we have had a cycling and walking safety review, a ‘last mile’ review, a future of light rail consultation, ‘road to zero’ decarbonisation strategy: if anyone thinks that is anything other than ‘high tempo Government’ you are sadly mistaken!”

He went on: “I take my hat off to my civil servants for all the work they have done. Even when the dial has been turned up to 11 on Brexit, there has been some positive results: a significant increase in resilience of transport in the South East and much greater mutual awareness of the need for different parts of Government to inter-operate in these circumstances.”

The Minister added that his department “has been very engaged in reaching out to other countries” in terms of transport resilience. “So I think there have been a lot of positive outcomes (from Brexit negotiations) and it has shown the Civil Service can rise to the occasion.”

Jesse Norman also spoke up for the Government’s recent light rail review and urged small cities to consider pooling resources to develop next generation production facilities for tram systems. In addition, the Minister said he looked forward to reading CIHT’s forthcoming review of local highway governance and funding, led by President Matthew Lugg.

A full report from the CIHT Annual Conference will appear in the April edition of Transportation Professional.

(Photograph: DfT)