£23bn across England (maybe the UK) as I understand it. I can’t remember the timescale but it’s in the order of 15 years I think.
Absolutely, and you can extend that thinking across all of the UK’s infrastructure. The whole idea of having a code of practice for maintaining highway structures didn’t come into fruition until 2003 from memory. Even now I’d be surprised if every highway asset owner was compliant, and those that are using it are way behind on the work. We all know councils are cash strapped. And then you also need to look at the Highways Agency, Network Rail, TfL and so on. Worth noting that many of these areas have been privatised also.
It’s worth comparing water services in England where it was privatised and Scotland where it wasn’t. They didn’t start from exactly the same place because the Scottish water services were in a bit of a mess, which is why they weren’t privatised.
I think we are being too light handed with decision makers, planners and designers though. As you say, very few councils will be compliant with the Well Maintained Highways CoP ( or whatever the latest iteration of the name is ) and there isn’t much interest in having the foresight to take into account maintenance and replacement costs long term. You could say this is a weakness of governments across most of the world but having experience in both UK and Aus, UK is miles behind.
When you think about it, there is so much staff turnover these days in local government that if you a are the one making the decisions, who gives a fuck right? As long as you aren’t lumped with the bill under your watch everything’s sweet. Just kick that can down the road
I come across 15 minute city conspiracy weirdo’s regularly to in my work. I would write it off as conspiracy nutcases, if I also didn’t suspect someone was ploughing some serious money into this somewhere.
To be fair many councils etc. use the CoP and what spills out from it. Where they struggle is the dealing with the actions that come from that work.
I used to be a project manager for a engineering consultancy that managed highway structures for councils. Some basically threw their available budget over the fence at us and asked us to spend it. We did, no problem.
Part of the CoP is understanding asset condition, and backlog. One decent sized council council I knew has an estimated £10m backlog of maintenance work that we knew about. There were a shit load of stuff we simply couldn’t get to on top of that. That was 15 years ago. Their annual budget for highway was £300k. One small bridge strengthening scheme or essential maintenance scheme might blow £200k of that. No problem. They were the small achievable ones.
That’s probably what you get when you have Brits emigrating out. I’d venture to guess that most of them who emigrate out are people within the 20 to 40 age group.
Get stuck with an older population (who are mostly conservative across countries) and that’s the govt we will get.
One thing i’d like to say is that India and China don’t necessarily need trade with UK.
The prime minister, Narendra Modi, author of a virulent Hindu nationalism set to intensify after his expected election victory in June, sees little merit in a trade deal with the former colonial master unless it overtly favours India. Inevitably, the negotiations have stalled. Imagining that Asia could replace Europe as Britain’s chief trading partner was always a poor bet. Leaving aside the small matter of geography, it now looks risible.
With respect to the above post , What’s the incentive for India to open trade with UK ? Is there something that UK manufactures which India must absolutely have ? I might be missing out on a few things here though.
) and there isn’t much interest in having the foresight to take into account maintenance and replacement costs long term. You could say this is a weakness of governments across most of the world but having experience in both UK and Aus, UK is miles behind.