Alice Hood
Local transport outside London is likely to face massive cuts in the spending review, according to a report published today by transport group pteg.
Alice Hood's Archive — Page 3
Alice Hood
I’m a TUC senior policy officer working on public services. I cover policy areas such as public service reform, health, local government, public service pensions and pay.
Before joining the TUC I worked in a policy role at the Local Government Association, for the European Parliamentary Labour Party and before that as a full-time elected student union officer.
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Alice Hood
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Alice Hood
Today the TUC published our response to the first phase of the Independent Public Service Pensions Commission, arguing that public service pensions are affordable and sustainable, contrary to the scaremongering of some commentators. Former Labour Business Secretary John Hutton has been appointed to head up a one-man Commission (no relation to the IoD’s so-called Independent Commission, whose arguments Nigel has thoroughly dismantled). The Hutton Commission has a punishing timescale to investigate the issues and make recommendations, with an initial report in September followed by a final report in March 2011.
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Alice Hood
The future of the major British Film Institute project on London’s Southbank is threatened by the withdrawal of £45 million of government funding, as Richard wrote yesterday. As architect’s journal BD reports, the international competition for the design of the centre was launched earlier this year, and a great deal of work has already been done on the project.
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Alice Hood
The leader of Durham County Council, Simon Henig, has suggested that local authority budget cuts are already disproportionately hitting the north. This is because funding streams like Area Based Grants are focussed on need – i.e. deprived communities, of which the north has a relatively higher share.
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Alice Hood
In the detail of this year’s local government cuts announced by CLG yesterday, spending on road safety has been hard hit, with £17.2 million going from the capital grant for local authority road safety work and £20.6 million from the road safety revenue grant.
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Alice Hood
Some new analysis from the Campaign for Better Transport finds that local transport schemes worth a total of £5.2bn are under review, and even a 10% reduction in the budget for local transport would mean £2bn worth of projects would be cut in the English regions.
CBT’s figures, reported in more detail in regeneration magazine New Start, predict that it isthe larger projects (those over £100m) that will be most at risk, and suggest that the North West will be hardest hit by cuts.
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Alice Hood
The railways look set to be hit by cuts to planned rolling stock improvements, plus fare rises and a looming row over bonuses.
A National Audit Office report concluded that Department for Transport plans
“…would not deliver as much extra capacity as originally specified, although the taxpayer would have provided nearly as much financial support (£1.2 billion over the period 2009-14) to train companies as originally envisaged.”
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Alice Hood
The cuts package announced this morning includes £683m from this year’s Department for Transport budget. PA are reporting that this will include a £100m cut in Network Rail spending, £108m from the Transport for London budget (which could hit London Underground upgrades), a £309m reduction in DfT grants to local authorities and deferral of some local road investment schemes, with the bulk of the rest coming from within the department. The cut in local government grants will combine with the massive reduction in local government grants from across government, likely to hit local services and provision for the most vulnerable across the board.
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Alice Hood
In the stack of papers published alongside today’s Budget was one on the Strategy for National Infrastructure. It might not sound exactly thrilling, but this document could lay the foundations for a more coherent approach to the infrastructure which supports the UK economy than we have seen for decades.
Projected demand for infrastructure investment is likely to be £40-50bn per year until 2030 according to the report, significantly more than the recent average of around £30 bn per year. The document promises to deliver a National Infrastructure Framework by the end of the year with a 50-year vision for the UK’s infrastructure and a 10 year plan of the outcomes needed to deliver it. It covers transport, energy, water, waste and communications and the Green Investment Bank will be developed under the remit of the strategy.
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Alice Hood
Lord Adonis made the much-anticipated announcement of plans for a UK high speed rail link today. Detailed plans for the route between London and Birmingham have been published for consultation, along with proposals for a £30bn “Y” shaped network also taking in Manchester, the East Midlands, Sheffield and Leeds, and there is future work to come on extending the lines to Scotland and the North East.
The TUC’s immediate reaction was to welcome the plans as bringing a great boost to the economy, jobs and skills, although we warned about the danger of neglecting the rest of the network. As we digest the government proposals and the enormous HS2 report, we will be looking to see whether the proposals can answer these five questions:
