The lack of co-ordinated long-term finance for transport and infrastructure strategies outside of London is a scandal, the head of the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has said.
In a forthright speech at a trade show in Birmingham this week, NIC chief executive Phil Graham called for an extra £43bn for transport and laid out a framework for major devolution to all of England's cities that could form the basis of joined-up transport, housing and employment plans.
Phil Graham - chief executive of NIC
He stated the plans would represent 'the biggest step forward in devolution since the advent of the metro-mayors' and would end a cycle of 'short-termism and [financial] bid fatigue'.
'It is scandalous that the co-ordinated investment strategy which has been so successful in London is not being replicated in the Midlands and elsewhere,' he said
'Instead of the genuine devolution and long-term funding that London has benefited from, the UK’s other cities face a fragmented and piecemeal system of funding programmes and grants – each requiring entry into a new bidding process, and adherence to a new set of priorities and requirements.'
Mr Graham called for:
- five-year funding settlements for all of England’s cities with local leaders free to decide how to spend them.
- a genuinely transformational funding increase – some £43bn in addition to current plans for city transport over the period to 2040.
- new powers and duties to make the most of the funding, including in particular a requirement on city leaders to produce joined-up transport, housing and employment strategies.
In perhaps the most pointed remark Mr Graham said: 'If the Government does disagree with us, then it means that it needs to properly explain itself – and set out just why it believes that a shorter-term approach with less funding and more central control will deliver a better outcome.'
He added that the Government's Transforming Cities Fund - initially £1.7bn in 2017 then extended by £680m to 2022/23 - was a step forward but is still 'small-scale and still suffers from the same short-time horizons'.
'With the money needing to be spent over what is effectively a three-year period, authorities are inevitably driven to short-term fixes like new carriages or schemes that happen to be already sitting on the shelf, rather than really starting to invest in the future.'
The NIC was established with cross party support to provide a independent long-term strategic view to government for its decisions on infrastructure.
However it has been involved a couple of tricky moments with government, firstly when ministers backtracked on giving it statutory status and secondly when the last chair Lord Adonis resigned over arguments with transport secretary Chris Grayling and over Brexit.
It has outlined a National Infrastructure Assessment the first in the UK under a fiscal remit of 1.2% of GDP.
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