The government has announced the biggest ever National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline, worth more than £500 billion to the private planned and public investment over this Parliament and beyond.
Published by the government’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority, the pipeline is up by £37 billion in comparison with the March document and will include 20 new schemes, such as the Cambridge to Oxford Expressway.
The pipeline will help to deliver important local schemes throughout the UK, including housing, flood defence, broadband and transport.
It contains:
More than £500bn of planned investment, with more than £300bn of this to be invested by 2020/21;
More than 720 projects and programmes across transport, housing and digital to fire up the nation’s infrastructure.
The pipeline will include major schemes including the Thames Tideway Tunnel, the rollout of smart meters, and upgrading the A14. The idea behind the pipeline is that it provides a single source of data for both government and the private sector, giving greater certainty for investors and suppliers.
The government claims that today’s pipeline is the largest and most comprehensive ever. However, it relies on private finance to make up more than half of the pipeline to 2020/21.
The publication of the pipeline has come soon after the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement announcement of the new £23 billion National Productivity Investment Fund.
The new fund will include infrastructure investments of over £2.6 billion to improve transport networks; a multi-million pound package to accelerate the future of broadband; and £7.2bn to support the construction of new homes.
The government has also today published a new funding and finance supplement to help attract further private sector investment into some of the UK’s most important infrastructure projects.
Chief executive of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA), Tony Meggs, said: “Creating the IPA has enabled us to produce a more comprehensive pipeline. Having the visibility and certainty of a pipeline of construction and infrastructure investment allows industry to invest strategically for the market, not just tactically for the project.”
