New legislation to boost infrastructure
5 Jun 2014 04:25 PM
The Infrastructure Bill introduces new measures to make it easier,
quicker and simpler to get Britain building for the future.
The Infrastructure Bill
introduces new measures to make it easier, quicker and simpler to get Britain
building for the future.
The government published
yesterday (5 June 2014) new legislation designed to encourage investment in
Britain’s infrastructure.
The Infrastructure Bill will
help create stable long term funding for work on the country’s major road
network ensuring smoother, quicker and quieter journeys and make it easier to
sell surplus and redundant public sector land and property to help build more
homes on brownfield land.
The legislation will also give
local people the right to buy a stake in renewable energy projects, while
cutting red tape for nationally significant infrastructure projects to boost
investment.
Measures
include:
- turning the Highways
Agency into a government-owned company with stable long term funding
to drive down costs to the taxpayer – saving £2.6 billion over the
next 10 years and making the new arms-length company more accountable to
Parliament and to road users
- enabling surplus and redundant
public sector land and property to be sold more quickly by cutting red tape
around such sales, increasing the amount of brownfield land available for new
homes
- improve the nationally
significant infrastructure regime by making a number of technical
administrative improvements to the Planning Act
2008 following a review of how the act has operated
- ending unreasonable and
excessive delays on projects which already have been granted planning
permission, by a new ‘deemed discharge’ provision on planning
conditions – this will help speed up house building
- creating a centralised Local
Land Charges register, as part of the modernisation and digitisation of Land
Registry, which will improve services and aim to reduce costs to users, helping
to speed up the home buying process
- giving local communities the
right to buy a stake in renewable energy infrastructure
projects
Transport Secretary Patrick
McLoughlin said:
Investment in infrastructure is
central to the government’s long-term economic plan and that is why we
are spending almost £73 billion over the period 2015 to 2021 on transport
alone.
This bill will hugely boost
Britain’s competitiveness in transport, energy provision, housing
development and nationally significant infrastructure
projects.
These powerful new measures will
drive investment, making it easier, quicker and simpler to get Britain building
for the future.
The joint bill was published by
the Department for
Transport on behalf of the:
Its provisions have been
developed following several reviews and extensive
consultation.
The Infrastructure Bill will be
formally published on Friday 6 June 2014 by Parliament.
Roads media
enquiries