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Getting to grips with project costs

James Moore (Your View, last month) and the Commons transport select committee reviewing “expensive” UK road and rail projects need to go back and read the full range of various contributions, reports, commentaries etcetera by diverse contributors to NCE, other periodicals and the press in the last 10 years or more. They have highlighted the reasons for UK’s infrastructure projects being 50% more expensive than similar projects in continental Europe.

To recap the problems, in general, the balance is not right between the national interests and the local interests of individuals and vested groups.

​National interests also include not having expensive projects.

The planning system needs simplification to give greater weight to universal and national benefit, with detail to be sorted out later as necessary.

Objections need to be dealt with in the design office not the courts and national standards need reviewing to stop overdesign. The approvals process is also over the top – we should eliminate the development consent order system. A simple ministerial okay is required with no further legal challenge allowed. UK red tape needs to be addressed.

The processes covered above take twice as long in UK to get through the pre-construction phases as elsewhere, with ensuing significant costs involved. Wrapped up in the problem is inflation. With the much longer duration of the pre-construction phase, inflation has a bigger impact and prolonged project preliminaries phases also contribute to higher costs.

The head of National Highways needs to sit down with Westminster and Whitehall for 12 months and devise an overall appropriate planning and approvals system and tackle other aspects to reduce the more expensive costs by one-third, and then the MPs can get it on the statute books in the following 12 months.

In the initial same 12 months the head of National Highways needs to look at three or four major countries across the channel to see how they get half the duration we have in the pre-construction phase.

John Franklin (F), contact details withheld

The Editor, New Civil Engineer,
​4th Floor, Harmsworth House, 13-15 Bouverie Street, London EC4Y 8DP
​Email: nceedit@emap.com

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