CMA to review wrong turns on road and rail building projects
The UK's competition regulator has opened an investigation into Whitehall's delivery of rail and road infrastructure.
The inquiry by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) comes just a day after a damning report into the failed delivery of the HS2 high-speed rail line between London and Birmingham which is hugely over-budget, hopelessly late and which ministers have admitted has made Britain the laughing stock of infrastructure investment.
It also follows the government's renationalisation of the railways, which it is planning to complete incrementally over the next couple of years.
• What happened to HS2? The project that made Britain a laughing stock
The CMA said its inquiry would focus 'on persistent issues around costs and delivery of road and railway infrastructure across the country', especially in the light of Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves's new ten-year infrastructure strategy to help grow the economy.
'There's no question that reliable, high-quality infrastructure is critical in accelerating economic growth,' said Sarah Cardell, chief executive of the CMA. 'To achieve this, public authorities and the civil engineering sector must be able to work together to deliver projects on time, within budget and to high standards.
'This review is a crucial step in identifying barriers holding back the sector — supporting the drive to get Britain building and ensuring every penny spent is delivering value for taxpayers.'
Identifying the long-standing friction and dysfunctional procurement engagement between Whitehall and its agencies, and private sector contractors, the CMA inquiry states: 'The market study will examine whether there are opportunities to improve how the public sector and industry work together, for example through improvements to public procurement, so more cost-effective infrastructure can be built in support of the government's growth mission.'
• Pumping money into infrastructure may not keep Labour in power
The CMA said it would make recommendations to government but does not have the power to intervene in the market directly.
Civil engineering is reckoned to be worth £23 billion annually to the UK economy. The National Infrastructure Commission has estimated that public and private sector investment will need to increase by up to 50 per cent over the next decade to deliver more complex infrastructure. Road and railway projects account for up to 75 per cent of government spending on economic infrastructure such as transportation and energy.
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors indicated the sector has previously suffered from a lack of what its chief executive Justin Young called a 'clear, joined-up infrastructure strategy that incorporates long-term thinking and vision'.
Young said he believes 'the country is on a considerably clearer path and represents a significant shift in how the government approaches infrastructure and industrial capacity', but warned of 'skills and labour shortages [that] stifle construction projects and investment in skills for new professionals'.
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