Brown urged to deliver sustained investment in built environment

Construction Products Association (CPA) president Roy Harrison has called on Chancellor Gordon Brown to increase spending on social housing, schools buildings, hospitals and roads by 23% to £54.7bn in his forthcoming Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR).

Harrison said:  "Even taking into account the Chancellor's financial commitments under the current Spending Review, the UK remains the poor man of Europe, ranking just above Estonia at 23rd with the standard of its infrastructure.

"Sustained investment over a number of years is required to raise the UK's competitiveness and improve the nation's quality of life. 

"The funding increases we are proposing will enable the Government to achieve its targeted improvements in social housing, school buildings, hospitals and roads."

Harrison said that while considerable sums were promised under the current CSR, delivery in a number of areas had been disappointing.

"The government must more effectively monitor progress over the next three years and be willing to act where targets are in jeopardy," he said.

"If the government is going to meet the targets it has set, it must ensure that the money it makes available is spent in those areas it has identified as priorities, even if this means a greater degree of ring-fencing around some of the resources made available through local authorities and other public agencies."