Video: Isabel Dedring, London Deputy Mayor for Transport

Chancellor George Osborne's recent Spending Review confirmed Transport for London's £11bn capital settlement to 2020/21 but the scaling back of revenue grant will leave a major hole in future funding aspirations, warns Deputy Mayor Isabel Dedring.

The capital faces major transport funding challenges over the next five years as central government cash gets tighter and the pressure on infrastructure from an increasing population continues to grow, according to Isabel Dedring, London Deputy Mayor for Transport.

"The good news is that our capital grant has been protected," she said, speaking at the recent Highways UK event in London in the AcoonAir Highways Hangout.

"The bad news is that we had asked for an extra capital settlement which we got exactly zero," she added. "That was because our revenue grant had a big capital element in it and as we have lost our revenue grant over the next three years therefore the capital grant within that will go with it. So any programmes that we have planned will need to be rejigged and potentially some of it will have to be cut. The additional capital spend was approximately £2bn+ so we have lost all of that. Not to mention the revenue grant."

Across the transport sector, professional will have to think more innovatively and emnbrace the use of new technology to propoerly manage and get the most capacity from existing asset,  she explained.

"Technology is massively important particularly technologies that exist today," said Dedring.

"When we talk about technology you can end up in a dream word of 30 years from now when everyone is ion driverless cars but there are vast numbers of technologies out there today – not least the mobile phone in everyone’s hand – which we could be working with much more closely. This is technology that could really help us manage the network more effectively now."