The FTA has called on the government to protect infrastructure spending when it publishes its Spending Review this Wednesday (26 June).
The review will cover the spending period starting from April 2015, and the FTA has urged chancellor George Osborne to maintain investment in transport infrastructure to ensure it can cope with the demands a return to growth will bring.
The FTA has called for the chancellor to:
- Increase the focus on protecting existing assets and encourage a more strategic approach to roads maintenance
- Target enhanced roads investment at the priority routes identified by FTA members, including reinstating projects currently ‘on-hold’ as a result of earlier spending cuts
- Continue to support improvements to rail freight facilities and ensure that track access charges remain at marginal cost
- Provide funds to share the cost of improvements linking private ports to public roads
- Ensure that the planning system takes full account of the national importance of schemes as well as the local implications
Karen Dee, FTA’s director of policy, said: “With competitiveness vital to securing economic growth and job creation, FTA believes that the measures it has put forward to the chancellor would not only deliver long-term benefits through improved connectivity for UK industry, but would also provide a welcome additional boost to the economy during construction.
“It would also give businesses the confidence necessary to invest, develop and innovate to support their customers.”
At the launch of its Logistics Report earlier this year, FTA chief executive Theo de Pencier urged the government to put its current infrastructure spending into play, stating “we’ve seen lots of plans but not a heck of a lot of evidence of things getting built”.
