Andy Burnham must shake Britain out of ‘analysis paralysis’ and get building
To address the UK’s broken infrastructure delivery model, Arup advocates for a new approach that prioritizes locally-led, outcome-focused projects and creative financing to better connect communities and drive economic growth, says Andrew Nothstine
Andy Burnham has already set out his governing philosophy and guiding aims. His ‘north stars’ are economic growth in every postcode through reindustrialisation enabled by a rewired state.
Connectivity is the common theme running through his ideas of devolution and regeneration. That joining places and people improves everyday quality of life and opportunity is an insight from his time in Manchester – but it also showed him that the UK’s current infrastructure delivery model is broken.
Projects take too long, cost too much and, because designed top-down, too rarely prioritise benefits for local communities. This is the reality – and it’s one that the incoming Burnham government clearly recognises.
Connect the regions
When the second phase of HS2 was abruptly cancelled by Rishi Sunak it threatened to deal a huge blow to the economic ambition of the North West and the Midlands, while also leaving unaddressed the severe congestion on Europe’s busiest railway. We at Arup worked with Mayors Burnham and Andy Street in finding alternatives to connect these two regions that were pragmatic, affordable and deliverable.
We started with the question of what, exactly, was the desired outcome for people and places on the corridor? Once clear it was to maximise economic growth, we could design a solution that delivered a comparable benefit at a lower cost than HS2.
Similarly, by prioritising economic ambitions for local communities, we helped Burnham and Steve Rotheram articulate a compelling investment case for a new railway between Liverpool and Manchester.
Poor connectivity is a primary factor behind the UK’s sluggish relative economic performance against comparable European regions. Germany’s Rhine-Ruhr region is highly similar to the UK’s Midlands-North West corridor in terms of population, industrial history, and geography but is dramatically outperforming us to the tune of an additional £100bn in annual output. There are many reasons but it is impossible to ignore the Rhine-Ruhr’s superior transport offer.
Waiting in, say, Crewe, for a train to Stockport is likely to give plenty of time for reflection on why GDP per head is £20,000 more in Randstad, Netherlands, another demographically comparable region. Furthermore, there may well be time to spare to ponder why every French city with a population of more than 150,000, the same size as Ipswich, now has a metro or tram system. As projects in Leeds and Cambridge remain stuck in development for decades the French have built mass transit in 30 towns and cities.
Thankfully, we don’t lack the skills or imagination to turn this around. From Brunel to Stephenson, British engineers have literally laid the foundations for modern mobility and shaping our cities. Today, British expertise is in demand the world over. From Peru to the Philippines and the Middle East to Australia, where we are working on the 2032 Olympics, there is no shortage of British brilliance helping deliver inspiring and transformative infrastructure around the globe.
To bring home the full benefits, however, demands a new approach, learning where necessary from others on how to unlock funding, speed delivery and answer locally defined needs. Creative financing, for example attracting investors by offering to share in the uplift in value around stations, is the sort of blended public and private money that will be needed. The UK’s current over-reliance on a technocratic business case process leads to ‘analysis paralysis’. Instead, we need to follow the example set by those engineering greats of the past. They established a vision and then were bold and unwavering in delivery. We are optimistic: done well, the new Number 10 North can play a key part in supercharging delivery. But it won’t work unless we take a new approach to how projects are selected and designed.
The success of the Elizabeth Line in London should help convince even the loudest sceptics, with Arup’s analysis showing that some 125,000 new jobs and 71,000 new homes were created around its stations in the first year of operation alone. Despite the project’s delivery challenges, it is clear that well-designed UK infrastructure can unlock massive benefits for our communities.
Our work with mayors across the UK shows what can and must be done. Trusting local leaders to identify the outcomes they most want and then helping them find the engineering and financing solutions that best serve that purpose is the key to filling the gap between the lofty rhetoric and the grounded reality. For those of us who focus their careers on getting stuff built – and enabling real place-based growth and transformation on the ground – these are exciting times.
Andrew Nothstine is director, UK economics, at Arup