Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what total length of new (a) road and (b) rail was laid in rural areas between 2010 and 2015; what the cost to the public purse was of such new road and rail; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Andrew Jones
Roads
The Department does not publish an estimate of total new road constructed in England for any point in time. However, it does publish estimates of road length in each year as part of the Road Lengths in Great Britain National Statistics release. The latest available information is for 2014 and is available on GOV.UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/road-network-size-and-condition.
In England, the total length of rural local authority managed classified ‘A’ road and rural minor road increased by 367 miles between 2010 and 2014. The length of motorway managed by local authorities remained constant between 2010 and 2014.
The length of rural trunk ‘A’ road in England increased by 7 miles between 2010 and 2014. The Department does not publish separate road length figures for urban and rural motorways, although total trunk motorway length increased by 22 miles.
The Department for Communities and Local Government publishes information on expenditure by local authorities on the construction and improvement of roads in England. This information is not disaggregated to show spend on rural roads and therefore represents expenditure on roads in all areas by authorities. This information is available on GOV.UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-capital-expenditure-receipts-and-financing.
Rail
There has been very little change to the length of Network Rail routes open for traffic across Great Britain between 2010 and 2015. The focus has been on making more intensive use of the existing network with additional train services and new stations as the Government undertakes the largest rail investment programme since Victorian times.
The Office of Rail and Road publishes statistics annually on the total length of rail route on its Data Portal (http://dataportal.orr.gov.uk). Information is not available for rural routes.
More detail about Network Rail’s expenditure can be found in its regulatory accounts, which are available on its website: http://www.networkrail.co.uk
Asked by: Lord Soames of Fletching (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much his Department spent on flood defences in the Thames Gateway in each of the last 15 years for which figures are available.
Answered by Dan Rogerson
The annual totals fluctuate depending on local need for investment in particular projects and the level of funding available. The table below shows capital expenditure on flood and coastal erosion risk management within the Thames Gateway area between 2008/09 and 2013/14. Figures for earlier years are not available.
The figures in the table include Government flood defence grant in aid, local levy (raised by Regional Flood and Coastal Committees from councils) and contributions from other public and private sources spent on projects carried out by the Environment Agency and by local authorities in the area.
The figures in the table do not include revenue costs, such as staff salaries and the routine river maintenance programmes or region-wide projects and programmes, such as flood and coastal erosion risk management strategies and reservoir inspection programmes.
‘
(£k) | |||||||
2008/09 | 2009/10 | 2010/11 | 2011/12 | 2012/13 | 2013/14 | Total | |
Thames Gateway area | 17,975 | 35,342 | 29,907 | 13,740 | 10,583 | 13,558 | 121,105 |
The Thames Gateway area in this table includes expenditure in on tidal defences in Barking and Dagenham, the outer Thames estuary in Essex, the Thames and Southern Regional Flood and Coastal Committee's area, including Kent, the Environment Agency's Thames Barrier team areas.