Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps he has taken to increase the capacity of local authorities to produce business cases for major transport projects.

As highlighted in the new Transport Investment Strategy, the Department for Transport, where appropriate, will offer targeted support to local authorities to help develop their bidding and delivery capability thus ensuring all areas of the country have the potential to produce high quality business cases to realise the benefits that strong transport projects will unlock.

The Department is also funding Local Authorities’ business case development costs for selected schemes within the Large Local Major schemes programme.

In addition the Department has provided capacity support to Local Enterprise Partnerships and Local Authorities through the Transport Delivery Excellence Programme in collaboration with the Local Enterprise Partnership Network.