What regions can really ‘build, build, build’ with Boris Johnson’s new investment package

Analysis: The £900m 'Getting Building Fund' will barely cover a roundabout in many areas, Jon Stone finds

(PA)

Boris Johnson pledged this week to "build build build" with a "New Deal", likening his policies to the vast stimulus package that lifted the United States out of the Great Depression.

Critics pointed out that what he'd pledged wasn't really new money – but rather a bringing forward of capital investment detailed in the Conservative manifesto.

But even on the government's terms, the sums being committed to local infrastructure projects around the country are tiny.

The prime minister pledged £900m for a range of "shovel ready" local growth projects in England spread over two years: improvements to connectivity, transport links, and the like.

The government has now published details about how its Getting Building Fund will be divided up between different regions, and seeing the breakdown underlines just how small beer this cash is.

Take Cornwall, whose local enterprise partnership has been given £14m to build something with. This may sound like a lot, but in road terms it is roughly equivalent to upgrading a single large roundabout.

A quick look the Highways England website for projects in this cost range shows an ongoing project to "upgrade the Redbridge roundabout" on the A35 near Southampton has an estimated cost of £12-14m.

Cornwall is one of the smaller recipients of funding (though it isn't the smallest – that honour belongs to the Thames Valley Berkshire local enterprise partnership, which only gets £7.5 million.)

The biggest recipient of funds is the South East local enterprise partnership, which gets £85m. Significantly more? Not really in infrastructure terms.

Again, a glance at Highways England's records shows this kind of money will get you some reasonable upgrades to a fairly short stretch of A-road, but nothing life-changing.

For example, a similarly priced ongoing project is the upgrade of the A47 between Blofield and North Burlingham – a two-mile stretch of single carriageway A-road outside of Norwich, which is being dualled and getting two new junctions. Highways England estimates the cost of this at between £50m and £100m.

Or perhaps you would prefer to spend your money reopening or building new rail lines? A good rule of thumb is that new rail line (nothing fancy) will cost about £20m a mile – so the southeast could use its entire tranche of cash to build around four miles of railway.

There are other plans in the government's announcements, but these are largely maintenance, repairs, and things that would otherwise have been happening anyway. Much of it is stretched over several years to make the numbers look bigger.

What's clear is that the Getting Building Fund is far from a New Deal – and won’t mean a great deal of change for Britain’s infrastructure.