Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the timeframe for their planned road improvement works announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 1 December.

The Road Investment Strategy (RIS) committed a total of £15.2 billion in enhancement and long term maintenance of the network between 2015/16 and 2020/21 including 127 major enhancements, of which 84 were newly announced.

This funding will be used to complete the road schemes on the Strategic Road Network currently under construction and begin construction of previously-announced schemes. It is anticipated that 69 of the 84 new road schemes announced as part of the RIS will enter construction over the course of the first Road Period which runs from 2015/16 to 2019/20.

A further 15 schemes will be developed during this Road Period, but may not enter construction until the next Road Period. This is generally because the design of the scheme is complex and needs time to consider a number of potential options or because interaction between a proposed scheme and other committed work on the network means doing all of the work at once would cause significant disruption. This RIS commits funding to prepare this scheme so it can be ready to enter construction early in the next Road Period. Should the Strategic Highway Company be able to develop the scheme more quickly than expected, and if efficiency savings have freed surplus funds, construction may begin this Road Period.