Decisions on local infrastructure schemes from 2015 will be approved by new Local Transport Bodies following government consultation on how funding and prioritisation of projects could be decentralised.

Local Transport Bodies (LTBs) will be made up of transport authorities, enterprise partnerships and other interested parties. Regions have been asked to confirm geographical details of their LTBs by this Friday (28 September). Funding levels will be set out on a per capita basis and each area will begin working on infrastructure plans for beyond 2015.

Announcing the move Transport Minister Norman Baker said a public consultation on devolved decision making showed broad support. Local major transport schemes have traditionally been approved and funded by Government under a central bidding process. “Distribution of funding between different areas will be on a simple per capita basis,” he said. “The total level of funding available will of course be subject to decisions made in future spending rounds.”

The announcement was welcomed by the Institute of Directors. “This decision should give businesses more of a say on key projects in their region and speed up approval of vital work to ease road and rail bottlenecks,” said senior economic advisor Corin Taylor. “It will now be vital for the new LTBs to put together a list of priorities so that work can start as soon as responsibility is transferred.”

But the Campaign for Better Transport described the plan to give more control to local bodies as “by no means perfect”. Campaigns director Richard Hebditch said: “Devolving more control over transport to the local level could provide real benefits. But if they take on more power over spending they need to take on responsibility for cutting carbon too.”

It is a concern, he added, that new bodies will only have a capital budget. “This risks channelling them towards solutions that add to transport capacity rather than better managing the demands on the transport system.”

Mr Baker said: “I fully support the key objective of removing Whitehall from the process of making decisions on which local schemes should or should not go ahead.

“However we have a responsibility to ensure that the new local decision makers have arrangements in place to achieve the value for money that we know the right schemes can deliver and to take into account important factors such as environmental impact.”

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