Weekly round-up - 6 March 2015

Transport for the North needs £15bn budget, Scots ppp repayments will cripple councils, London picks sites for two new crossings and China's gigantic cement demand.

Jackie Whitelaw
05 March 2015

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1. The government should invest £15bn in Transport for the North to revitalise transport links according to the Institute for Public Policy Research. It wants the investment included in the 18 March Budget. TfN would take responsibility for rail, road, sea and air transport and decide priorities for infrastructure investment, franchising and ticketing, it said.

2. Scottish council public private partnership debt repayments to the private sector will peak at the same time as they will be hit with unprecedented demand for services from old people and schoolchildren, the country’s public spending watchdog has warned. Annual repayments to the Scottish Government’s non-profit distribution (NPD) public-private partnership debt and its private finance initiative (PFI) predecessor is predicted to rise from £488M to £600M by 2024/25, the Accounts Commission said.  By this time, demographic pressures caused by an ageing population and more children will be rising.

3. A Transport for London consultation on east London river crossings has identified Gallions Reach and Belvedere as potential sites for a new east London river crossing. The bridge at Gallions Reach would connect Thamesmead with Royal Docks, while the Belvedere site would connect north Bexley with Havering.  TfL will now put further work into developing options for bridges at Gallions Reach and Belvedere and launch a new consultation in autumn this year.

4. A £23bn south-west infrastructure package has been announced, the first of its kind, which will see the government focusing on improving the region’s road, rail and businesses from the Isles of Scilly to Exeter. 

5. According to RICS China has used more cement in three years than the US used in the whole 20th century, 6.6gigatonnes between 2011 – 2013 compared to us 4.5gt.

6. Campaign for Better Transport has demanded action after research exposed the illegal air pollution impacts of planned hard-shoulder running on the M4 through outer London and major commuter towns. The Highways Agency is planning to turn the hard shoulder into an extra lane between Hayes and Reading (Junctions 3-12). Campaign for Better Transport looked at the details of the predicted air pollution impacts in the Highways Agency's own reports. This revealed how the extra traffic generated by the scheme would breach air pollution laws and mean large numbers of people would continue to be exposed to illegal air pollution. The organisation has called on the Highways Agency to amend its plans to, either: remove all-lane running from the proposals, reserving the hard shoulder only for congested times, as in the original Managed Motorway schemes, which still had beneficial effects on congestion, or reduce the speed limit at all times to below 60 mph. 

7. EEF, the manufacturers’ organisation, has launched its new skills manifesto urging the Government to set a target of three-quarters of jobs to be medium or high-skilled by 2020. The target is part of a policy blueprint designed to meet the manufacturing sector’s ever-increasing demand for skills. It follows last week’s National Manufacturing Conference where it was revealed that manufacturers will be facing a technology-driven 4th industrial revolution within the next decade. Six in ten manufacturers (59%) are concerned about the impact this will have on skills, while 63% predict increased demand for highly skilled workers. EEF is pushing for 90% of state secondary school maths, physics, chemistry and biology teachers to have at least a post A-level qualification in the subject they teach. It also wants to see a 25% increase in the number of apprentices completing engineering and manufacturing apprenticeships. To see a copy of EEF’s full manifesto Securing a manufacturing renaissance: priorities for Government see here. 

8. Enough unused public sector land has been released to build over 103,000 new homes, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has said. And there are plans to release land with capacity for 150,000 homes between 2015 and 2020. The land released to date is on 899 sites including Ministry of Defence land at Aldershot in Hampshire where planning permission has been granted for up to 3,850, Bexhill former galley sidings – a derelict former oil storage depot with railway sidings site sold by the British Railways Board where Barratt has permission to build 64 properties and Stratford City former railway land, sold by London and Continental Railways in 2011, which is now the site of ‘Stratford One’, a 28-storey building providing accommodation for 1000 students next to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

9. Hinkley C nuclear power station in Somerset is the subject of a new legal challenge. A German energy co-operative founded by environmental lobby group Greenpeace is to launch a legal action against the European Commission saying it should not have given approval to the strike price deal which could be seen as a subsidy. Austria - which opposes nuclear power - has also signalled it will launch its own legal challenge against the project, arguing that subsidies ought to be restricted to renewable energy sources.

10. Government has agreed to sell its entire interest in Eurostar International Limited for £757.1M. A consortium of Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and Hermes Infrastructure has agreed to acquire government’s 40% stake for £585.1M. Eurostar has, on closing of the sale of the government stake, agreed to redeem government's preference share, for £172M.