Healthy interest in the Department for Transport’s latest bid to increase the use of private cash in tackling the highway maintenance backlog has been uncovered by Surveyor. Twelve local highway authorities are set to compete for the £600M pot, with most requiring £120-£150M in private-finance initiative credits.
A number are northern city councils, and David Locke, at the 4Ps, said that no county council was among the 12. ‘The Department for Transport hopes to approve four to six schemes,’ he said. ‘Depending on the size of the chosen bids, this may well require more funds.’
Sheffield City Council is pressing ahead with a bid for between £300M and £400M of the funding, which would swallow up the bulk of it. Rob Davison, assistant head of design and build, said the investment would lift the authority ‘off the bottom of the road quality league’.
Hull City Council, taken over by the Lib Dems in May, is pushing ahead with a bid in the region of £100M, in response to residents’ concerns. The new administration redirected £4M of capital funds both for extra maintenance and to draw up a bid.
The Isle of Wight unitary authority – just over the water from Portsmouth, the only authority to have sealed a PFI deal for highways – is also due to bid, expecting its contract to be worth some £800M. The council has logged highways assets across its 822km network using Mayrise software in readiness.
But, as the DfT’s 10 September deadline for bids nears, not a single county council is due to bid, following comments from county officials that PFI was ‘expensive’, and only right for networks ‘with extreme problems’ (Surveyor, 2 March).
A working group of Norfolk councillors is considering a possible bid, but is not due to feedback until the 20 September.
A final decision on successful applicants is expected in December or, at the latest, early 2007.