Chancellor right to make infrastructure investment central feature of Autumn Statement
Institution of Civil Engineers
The Institution of Civil Engineers welcomes the Chancellor's support for social and economic infrastructure delivery in this week's Autumn Statement.
The ICE has welcomed the Chancellor’s decision to make infrastructure’s ability to enable “economic growth and thriving communities” the main feature of the Autumn Statement.
The Autumn Statement picks up on many of the recommendations made in the ICE led National Needs Assessment. Linking housing and economic infrastructure will create places that people want to live and work and lay the framework for a more productive nation.
The National Needs Assessment (NNA) has said that Britain's future infrastructure needs are intertwined. Population growth, climate change and technology will all change the way in which people interact with infrastructure services. We will need to meet these challenges with a mix of new infrastructure and technology to improve capacity of existing assets.
The NNA says that in order to address the housing crisis at least 300,000 new homes are needed annually for the foreseeable future. One million homes by 2020 will not be enough, it says.
To achieve this, the Government must recognise the inability of the private sector, as currently incentivised, to build the number of homes needed.
It also argues that local authorities and housing associations must be incentivised and enabled to make a much greater contribution to the overall supply of new housing. Without this contribution it will not be possible to build the number of new homes required.
Nick Baveystock, Director General of the Institution of Civil Engineers commented:
‘The Chancellor is right to make infrastructure’s ability to enable economic growth and thriving communities the main feature of the Autumn Statement. Following the recommendation made in the ICE led National Needs Assessment, the Chancellor announced that he will provide infrastructure targeted at unlocking new private house building in the areas where housing need is greatest. This links social and economic infrastructure together enables an integrated approach to infrastructure delivery that will provide places where people will want to live and work.
‘The ICE headlined that demands from population growth, demographic changes, climate change and economic trends will alter how infrastructure is used. The new National Productivity Investment Fund will provide £23billion over the next 5 years into housing, transport, digital and research and development. This investment will provide new infrastructure and the ability to use technology to manage capacity of our networks more effectively.
‘Borrowing powers for regions to finance new infrastructure projects also heralds the start of a rebalanced economy. This was a key recommendation from ICE’s State of the Nation: Devolution report, published earlier this year, showing Government has listened and acted on the advice of industry.
‘Infrastructure is the cornerstone of strong and growing economy and the way to generate prosperity for our everyday way of lives – whether it is through housing, transport or 5G broadband, it transforms lives and strengthens communities.
‘We have previously announced that the UK population is set to reach 75 million by 2050 and with that growth there will be an increasing and changing demand for infrastructure services’.
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