771: NIC to produce vision and priorities in a week

Today’s entry reports on progress with the National Infrastructure Commission.

The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) is a body charged with producing a once-a-Parliament National Infrastructure Assessment (NIA) of the country’s infrastructure needs for the next 30 years, and is also given specific studies to carry out.

The main staging post in the NIC’s production of the NIA is a declaration of its ‘vision and priorities’, and this is to be published on the auspicious date of Friday 13 October at a launch in Birmingham. This document ‘will set out [the NIC’s] proposed long-term vision, the priority areas for action and policy options for addressing the infrastructure needs identified.’

The Vision and Priorities were due to be published this summer (indeed the NIC website still says this) but has been somewhat delayed, no doubt the election contributing to that (and also meaning they didn’t manage to get an NIA out during the 2015-17 Parliament).

The full NIA will then be published some time next year, a prudent move even though this Parliament could last until 2022 now.

I think the big questions are:

• should we build more infrastructure to meet peaks in demand or spread the peaks of energy use and travel (with varying levels of compulsion) instead?;
• should we make successful places (eg London) more successful or try to bring other areas up to the same level (which may mean losing some of their distinctiveness);
• is quality of life improved more by spending on a lot of small things or a few big things?; and
• do we want a green future? A technological future? A cultural and sporting future? Or a combination? These can all be facilitated by infrastructure.

I must say I am eagerly anticipating the NIC’s vision and priorities to see if it addresses any of the above questions, and also the degree of consultation and engagement that accompanies it. For the NIC to be as credible as it wishes to be it needs a lot of buy-in into what it is proposing.

Just for completeness, this is where the NIC is at with its specific studies. Four have been completed and two are in progress.

Completed:

• Smart Power (how the UK can better balance supply and demand, aiming towards an electricity market where prices are reflective of costs to the overall system);
• Transport for a World City (the strategic case for additional large scale transport infrastructure in the capital and its region, with particular reference to proposals for a new north-east to south-west ‘Crossrail 2’ line);
• High Speed North (strategic improvements to transport connectivity in the North); and
• Connected Future (what the UK needs to do to become a world leader in 5G deployment, and to ensure that the UK can take early advantage of the potential applications of 5G services).

In progress (and so with more mundane working titles):

• due to complete this autumn: Growth Corridor (how to maximise the potential of the Cambridge – Milton Keynes – Oxford corridor as a single, knowledge-intensive cluster that competes on a global stage, protecting the area’s high quality environment, and securing the homes and jobs that the area needs); and
• due to complete by the end of this year: New Technology Study (a new study on how technology can improve infrastructure productivity).

I’ll be in Birmingham next Friday and will report back.