The Government this week switched £350M from the Department for Transport (DfT) to pay for additional social and affordable housing, while also pledging to deliver ‘world-class’ transport infrastructure.
A Treasury spokesman told Surveyor that the DfT money had been held in reserve for 2009/10 and 2010/11, should it be necessary for the Government to step in to co-fund the private-finance initiative contract to upgrade the M25, following the credit crunch.
However, in the end, the banks provided sufficient private finance for the £6.2bn PFI deal, which meant the DfT anticipated an under-spend of £350M.
Business secretary, Peter Mandelson, said the move, announced in the Building Britain’s future document unveiled by the Government, reflected the need to ‘reprioritise expenditure, both within and between departments’ given new priorities.
The announcement of £1.5bn extra funding for affordable and social housing, half of which was funded by under-spends from other departments, came at the same time as the Government set out its transport manifesto.
Building Britain’s future commits the Government to create a new body, Infrastructure UK, to advise on the country’s transport and other infrastructure needs over the next five to 50 years, over and above existing plans.
The Institution of Civil Engineers has long called for the Government to appoint an engineering expert, to advise on infrastructure requirements.
The Government also promised to publish a national cycle plan to ‘further promote cycling as a mainstream form of transport’. Ministers said that while the cycling budget had increased to £60M annually, established 18 cycle demonstration towns, and cycling in London had doubled, ‘we want to build on this, and go further’.
The comprehensive plan would ‘set out the role that local authorities can play in delivering a cycling revolution’.
A new active transport strategy to encourage low-carbon options, jointly delivered by the DfT and the Department of Health, would also be published by the end of 2009. A report on the five-year sustainable travel town pilots programmes to change travel behaviour, which concluded in March, is promised for the autumn.
Nicola Francis, Peterborough City Council’s travel choice team manager, said the three pilot authorities had ‘proved that this works’. Car trips had been reduced by 9%, bus patronage increased by 50%, and the time spent cycling and walking was up 16%.
Surveyor has learned, however, that the DfT does not plan to provide further money for ‘smarter choice’ measures, but instead to encourage local authorities to consider the measures.
Stephen Joseph, the Campaign for Better Transport’s executive director, commented: ‘The Government says it wants real choice in pubic services, but in transport, too often, people drive because they have no real choice.’
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