Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what was their (1) capital, and (2) resource, expenditure on transport in each region of England in each of the last five years.

Investment by the Department for Transport is made based on a fair and rigorous process designed to ensure that spending goes where it is most needed.

Figures on public sector expenditure at a regional level are part of the Government’s Country and Regional Analysis (CRA) statistics. These statistics attempt to allocate the spending according to where the benefits of the spending are accrued. For technical reasons it is extremely difficult to make accurate cross-comparisons.

The statistics include spending on transport by all public sector organisations, including the Department for Transport, Local Authorities, Public Corporations (in the case of transport, this is mainly spending by London Underground) and other Government Departments (including the devolved administrations).

The CRA also measures the levels of ‘capital’ and ‘current’ expenditure, which are presented separately in the tables below. Capital spending can be used as a proxy for investment, whereas current spending includes recurring expenditure such as on wages and benefits.

Table 1: Public sector capital expenditure on transport, by region

Source: Country and Regional Analysis statistics

Table 2: Public sector current expenditure on transport, by region

Source: Country and Regional Analysis statistics

¹ The full extent of Network Rail (NR) expenditure is recorded in the CRA figures from 2015-16 following the reclassification of NR as a public body. Prior to 2015-16, only the Network Grants paid by the Government to NR were included. This has led to an upward step-change in total recorded NR spending in the CRA data and therefore rail expenditure from 2015-16 onward is not directly comparable with previous years.

When comparing expenditure across regions a number of factors should be considered. For example, London receives a substantial number of daily commuters and visitors, both domestically and internationally, who will be using and benefitting from the roads and public transport networks but who aren’t London residents. The unique scale and urban density of London also means that large scale public transport networks are particularly important. It should be additionally be noted that big projects, such as Crossrail, which is the largest infrastructure project in Europe, can in any case significantly distort these figures.