- Moderator
- #161
What i read from this speech is that the government will be more likely to wave through airport expansion proposals and it means local councils will have less ability to obstruct them.
The question is whether the government will invest any of its own money into such projects…and this speech doesn’t seem to indicate anything of the sort.
The chancellor said that even in the case of road and rail projects, they will try to rely on private investment as much as possible.
So while it may appear that the removal of planning laws will make the delivery of large projects easier, in practice, the government’s decision to rely on private investment as much as possible means a lot of projects are now dead or mothballed because they depended on government money.
In a lot of cases the designers and contractors were paid for designs, and redesigns, and local councils spent on consultations, and the costs mounted on plans that will probably never see the light of day now.
We’re not just talking about large projects like HS2 or the Stonehenge tunnel, but local road upgrades or bypasses for small villages.
I could be wrong, but since the third runway will involve large road projects affecting the A4 and M25, I suspect there may be some debate over who should be responsible for funding and delivering these projects and things could get messy very quickly.
The question is whether the government will invest any of its own money into such projects…and this speech doesn’t seem to indicate anything of the sort.
The chancellor said that even in the case of road and rail projects, they will try to rely on private investment as much as possible.
So while it may appear that the removal of planning laws will make the delivery of large projects easier, in practice, the government’s decision to rely on private investment as much as possible means a lot of projects are now dead or mothballed because they depended on government money.
In a lot of cases the designers and contractors were paid for designs, and redesigns, and local councils spent on consultations, and the costs mounted on plans that will probably never see the light of day now.
We’re not just talking about large projects like HS2 or the Stonehenge tunnel, but local road upgrades or bypasses for small villages.
I could be wrong, but since the third runway will involve large road projects affecting the A4 and M25, I suspect there may be some debate over who should be responsible for funding and delivering these projects and things could get messy very quickly.
