Chancellor George Osborne has unveiled plans to reallocate £5 billion of Whitehall funding to infrastructure projects and ask business-led local enterprise partnerships (LEPS) to produce new strategic plans for local growth.
Planning Portal writes:
Chancellor George Osborne has announced that £5bn saved from Whitehall departmental budgets would be used to boost infrastructure spending and help the delivery of 120,000 new homes.
In his Autumn Statement he signalled the funding would be used to:
1. upgrade key sections of the A1, bringing the route from London to Newcastle up to motorway standard
2. link the A5 with the M1
3. dual the A30 in Cornwall
4. upgrade the M25.
He also announced a £1bn loan and a guarantee to extend London’s Northern Line to Battersea Power Station and support a new development on a similar scale to the Olympic Park.
This news was welcomed by London Mayor Boris Johnson. He stressed that extending the Northern Line was key to kickstarting regeneration of the Nine Elms area of south London.
He said: ‘This offers the greatest potential for new growth and development in the capital since the expansion of Canary Wharf; and is perhaps the largest inner city regeneration project in Western Europe.’
In a related development, the Government has also confirmed it will designate an enterprise zone covering the Battersea site and other identified developments in the area.
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