6.1 The first National Infrastructure Plan, and the subsequent Infrastructure Cost Review, set out evidence that delivering infrastructure in the UK is more expensive than for European peers. A wide variety of issues contribute to this, but some of the key problems include a complex and unclear planning and consenting regime, the lack of a visible pipeline of forward work, use of unnecessary engineering standards, and insufficient exploitation of the opportunities presented by interdependencies between infrastructure networks. There is an opportunity to realise savings of at least 15 per cent, which would amount to £20 to £30 billion over the next decade.
6.2 The Government is taking a number of steps to address these issues and deliver savings:
• it will reform the planning and consenting regimes, by ensuring that the key consenting and advisory agencies have a remit to promote sustainable development as soon as the National Planning Policy Framework is finalised, and that there is a more effective mechanism for developers to obtain an award of costs where a statutory consultee has acted unreasonably;
• it has started driving out duplication and redundancy in technical standards, through the work of an Industry Standards Group. For example, London Underground aim to reduce the number of pages in their in-house standards from 12,400 to 400 by March 2012, greatly simplifying requirements and focussing on performance and outputs; and
• it is establishing a dedicated £5 million national taskforce, led by the British Transport Police, to tackle metal theft. This taskforce's first steps will include an immediate programme of action targeting scrap metal dealers that are suspected to be trading illegally in stolen metal.