INVESTIGATION: Does looming 'austerity' budget signal crunch time for UK roads?

Drivers face yet more doom and gloom as signs point to the forthcoming budget leading to big cuts in road-buliding plans

- Chris Rosamond

THE 15 March budget could be a crunch point for UK roads, as the Department for Transport (DfT) juggles calls for cash against the Treasury's aims to reduce the national deficit.

The DfT says it's "close" to finalising how its spending will be allocated next year. At a Transport Select Committee hearing on 1 February, DfT chief civil servant Dame Bernadette Kelly told MPs: "The March budget will be a significant moment." Not only will councils be allocated cash for maintaining their crumbling local roads, but the DfT is also grappling with the funding for its Roads Investment Strategy (RIS) for the national network of motorways and A-roads.

One MP on the committee, Labour's Ben Bradshaw, suggested cost overruns and delays in the current second phase of RIS would mean expensive new projects that National Highways hopes to build from 2025 - which include the A303 Stonehenge tunnel and the new Lower Thames Crossing - were "pie in the sky".

National roads projects under threat

● National Highways admits it can't deliver planned schemes 

● Budget cut by £3.4billion while costs have risen by £3.6bn

WE'RE in the middle of the second of the trio of five-year Roads Investment Strategy plans - RIS1, 2 and 3 - which were announced in 2014. About £17bn was spent as part of RIS1 from 2015 to 2020, with £27bn allocated for RIS2 from 2020 to 2025, yet almost a year ago, National Highways (NH) admitted delivery of the 69 schemes planned for RIS2 was impossible. It cut the number of RIS2 projects to 58, while the DfT reduced the budget by £3.4bn. The National Audit Office (NAO) says costs for the surviving projects have risen by £3.6bn, and it has been critical of NH planning and budgeting.