£150m infrastructure fund receives bids worth £600m

The government has received £600m of bids for its £150m community infrastructure fund for transport schemes in the four housing growth areas, it was announced last Thursday.

A shortlist of £225m of bids has been made and the winners will be announced in the autumn.

In the Thames Gateway projects worth £67m will be taken forward. In Milton Keynes South Midlands £111m of bids were shortlisted, £39m went forward in the M11 corridor and £8m in Ashford.

The infrastructure fund was to have been £200m but £34m was diverted to the London mayor Ken Livingstone in the summer to fund transit schemes in the capital, while the East Luton Corridor scheme and the Rushenden Relief Road on the Isle of Sheppey got £5m each towards improvements.

Meanwhile, organisations have been invited to bid for a separate £235m ODPM fund for infrastucture in the Ashford, Milton Keynes South Midlands and M11 growth corridors. Formal bids for the £235m fund must be submitted by September.

The community infrastructure fund runs from 2006 to 2008 but transport minister Tony McNulty was unable to say whether projects that were delayed could carry money forward beyond the two-year period.

He said: “We hope that [underspend] is not going to be the case. That’s why there has been a very rigorous selection and appraisal process … I hope [by July] if there are problems with deliverability we can meet them or take the project out.”

When asked whether the fund was too small to meet the infrastructure needs of the growth areas, McNulty said: “I have never declared this to be the be-all and end-all of transport funding in these areas. People need to see the community infrastructure fund in terms of mainstream funding in the growth areas.”

He could not say whether the fund would be repeated in future years to finance the £450m of bids set to lose out in the current round. He said: “Will there be subsequent spend of this focus? I would say certainly yes, but what form will it take? I am no more a futurologist than you are.”

Despite the new funding, the East of England assembly insists that there is not enough infrastructure to support the new housing planned for the area so it still cannot approve plans for 478,000 homes.

John Reynolds, the chair of the assembly’s planning committee, said: “There’s still a long way between what we have been promised and the £6bn we need just for the next three years. The assembly’s view remains the same: we do not have sufficient resources available to ensure infrastructure.”

He added: “We were pleased we got major schemes funded but disappointed that some schemes were not funded.”