Chancellor Rishi Sunak promised to “build infrastructure that will lay the foundations for a new century of prosperity”, as he set out the first Budget of the new Government.

The new Potholes Fund will provide £500M a year, representing a 50% increase to local road maintenance budgets in the next financial year. The Chancellor said the fund is enough to fill 50 million potholes over the course of this Parliament.

The Budget also confirmed the development of 15 local road upgrades across the country including junction improvements to the A350 in Wiltshire, a link road connecting Chesterfield to Staveley and a dual carriageway in Warwickshire.

Rishi Sunak also expressed a desire to improve cross border links between North Wales and England by developing a bypass on the A483 at Pant Llanymynech.

The Chancellor reiterated that £27Bn will be spent on the strategic road network over the next five years and emphasised that the Government is committed to getting proposed upgrades to the A303 in the South West done.

A further pledge was to invest in urban transport through new allocations to 12 cities from the Transforming Cities Fund, worth £1Bn by 2023. In addition eight city regions – including a new Mayoral Combined Authority in West Yorkshire – have been promised £4.2Bn over five years for transport investment.

Support for low emission vehicles was also announced, including additional funding to extend the plug in car grant. Government has also published a call for evidence on vehicle excise duty, which will include how it could be used to reduce emissions.

In addition it is providing £500M over the next five years to support the roll out of a fast charging electric vehicle network, to ensure drivers will never be further than 30 miles away from a rapid charging station.

On the railways, funding was announced for a new station at Cambridge South and the Midlands Rail Hub.

Government had been expected to unveil its National Infrastructure Strategy at the Budget, but documents released immediately after the Chancellor’s speech revealed that the strategy will now publish later in the spring.

Documents also show that the Government will spend £2M next year to carry out contract reviews on private finance initiative contracts in England, which include highway maintenance contracts.

Andrew Hugill, Director of Policy and Technical Affairs said:

"CIHT today welcomes the investment commitments outlined by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in highways and transportation in today's budget.
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."

“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 healthy 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.”

(Photograph: HM Treasury)