INFRASTRUCTURE ACT 2015 LAW UNITED KINGDOM HIGHWAYS ROADS ENVIRONMENTAL TRANSPORT POTHOLES

LET DOWN - The voting public expect that when they pay for a service as basic as the provision of roads, that they will not be unfit for purpose and littered with potholes.

The Infrastructure Act 2015 is relatively silent in the naming. It is to do with roads and highways. You may notice how awful the roads are at the moment with potholes everywhere. Clearly, we are in big trouble, with a perceived lack of investment, despite the fact that roads are the lifeblood of industry and living.

In his 2020 budget Rishi Sunak announced an investment of £27 billion in Britain’s roads, which includes the second round of Major Road Network and Large Local Major schemes proceeding to the next stage of development, plus a £2.5 billion fund to repair Britain’s potholes, aiming to fill 50 million potholes and resurfacing roads over the next five years.

The government is investing £4.2 billion in the transport networks of eight city regions across England from 2022-23. Funding will be delivered through five-year, consolidated transport settlements.

It will provide £83 million of funding for local road maintenance in the South East through the Potholes Fund in 2020-21.

Transport and the ability to travel efficiently are basic needs in any country. The road fund licence is a tax that raises vast sums of money that is not being spent on roads or the necessary infrastructure to herald in the new age of electric motoring. Roughly 5% of this tax ends up being spent on roads. Talk about breach of contract and acts of bad faith. Not to mention the risk to life that dangerous roads present.

DANGEROUS - Main roads or country roads, it is all the same, life threatening potholes are everywhere, just waiting to catch out the unwary traveller.

DEPARTMENTAL STRATEGY

UK politics sometimes seems like musical chairs in the frequency of job changes and name changes of departments, as they duck and dive to avoid foul-ups and taking responsibility that could lead to their political demise. Ministers are sometimes appointed with little knowledge of the subject matter, but who are willing to fit within an overall strategy by the incumbent Prime Minister of the day - as of 2020 - Boris Johnson (Bojo). You will have to read between the lines to decide for yourself the why's and wherefores, and the alliances with big business, that on occasion cloud the main issues.

There are big bucks at stake, winners and losers in the transport and housing segments - and finally economics to consider. These days they must be circular, or sustainable in the long term. Something that, historically, the Conservative Party have difficulty with, as per Margaret Thatcher's astonishing 'quick fixes.'

And now we have Greta Thunberg enlightening the voters of the future, demanding transparency and truthfulness!

PREVIOUS HOLDERS OF THE EQUIVALENT ROLE:

WHO JUNE 2019 - A newly installed solar power plant in the Gaza Strip, Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), will reduce Nasser Hospital’s reliance on donated fuel and, by providing life-saving interventions, help build resilience. This is according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The Infrastructure Act 2015 is a wide-ranging piece of planning and infrastructure legislation passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom during David Cameron's administration. The act targets "transport, energy provision, housing development and nationally significant infrastructure projects."

The Infrastructure Act 2015 is especially relevant to development and planning law around development. An explicit aim of the legislation was to increase housing development within Britain, which became an increasingly important political issue in the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Sadly, it backfired, with councils such as Wealden taking this as an excuse to unleash consents for thousands of energy hungry units without climate change features - so becoming climate criminals, along with the developers they favoured - tearing up conservation policies in the free for all.

In addition to housing, key UK development and planning issues were addressed within the Act by efforts "to make provision about nationally significant infrastructure projects...to make provision about town and country planning...to make provision about the Homes and Communities Agency and Mayoral development corporations...to make provision for giving members of communities the right to buy stakes in local renewable electricity generation facilities".

SHOW US THE AFFORDABLE HOUSES - Wealden can't, because they have not built any. You won't get planning consent in this area of Sussex for low cost housing, because there is no profit in that. It's all about money and the Community Infrastructure Levy. There is no CIL on affordable housing. What these councillors want is lots of expensive houses to generate more rateable taxes that they can then pay to their overpaid planning officers, legal staff and executives.

In the quest to reduce global warming, and yet still provide energy for the world to be able to live, we face a difficult situation, with difficult choices for those with wealth and collections of fossil fuelled luxury cars, mansions and yachts. For the rest of us it is simple, freely available, clean, renewable energy and zero carbon transport, combined with energy self-sufficient housing.

1995 COP 1, BERLIN, GERMANY	2008 COP 14/CMP 4, POZNAN, POLAND
1996 COP 2, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND	2009 COP 15/CMP 5, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK
1997 COP 3, KYOTO, JAPAN	2010 COP 16/CMP 6, CANCUN, MEXICO
1998 COP 4, BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA	2011 COP 17/CMP 7, DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA
1999 COP 5, BONN, GERMANY	2012 COP 18/CMP 8, DOHA, QATAR
2000:COP 6, THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS	2013 COP 19/CMP 9, WARSAW, POLAND
2001 COP 7, MARRAKECH, MOROCCO	2014 COP 20/CMP 10, LIMA, PERU
2002 COP 8, NEW DELHI, INDIA	2015 COP 21/CMP 11, Paris, France
2003 COP 9, MILAN, ITALY	2016 COP 22/CMP 12/CMA 1, Marrakech, Morocco
2004 COP 10, BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA	2017 COP 23/CMP 13/CMA 2, Bonn, Germany
2005 COP 11/CMP 1, MONTREAL, CANADA	2018 COP 24/CMP 14/CMA, Katowice, Poland
2006 COP 12/CMP 2, NAIROBI, KENYA	2019 COP 25/CMP 15/CMA, Madrid, Spain
2007 COP 13/CMP 3, BALI, INDONESIA	2020 COP 26/CMP 16/CMA 3, Glasgow, Scotland

According to Power-Technology.com, a website that provides market and customer insights in this sector, they listed these power companies (according to the 2018 Forbes calculation of net market capitalization, assets, sales and profit) as the biggest utilities:

1. TRANSPORT: Phase out polluting vehicles. Governments aim to end the sale of new petrol, and diesel vehicles by 2040 but have no feasible infrastructure plan to support such ambition. Marine transport can be carbon neutral with smaller container ships that are solar and wind powered.

3. HOUSING: On site micro or macro generation is the best option, starting with new build homes that are zero carbon, or energy neutral. We must make it illegal for councils to grant planning permission to any new houses that are not compliant. Local authorities are to blame for kleptocratic decision making - making them climate criminals.

5. INDUSTRY: Factories should be aiming for solar heating and onsite renewable energy generation.

6. POLITICS: - National governing bodies need to adopt rules to eliminate administrative wastages, to include scaling down spending on war machines, increasing spend on educating the public and supporting sustainable social policies that mesh with other cultures. One way of pushing this agenda is total transparency in Governments and Courts as per United Nations SDG 16. This would tend to prevent corrupt politicians and civil servants from pursuing unlawful agendas.