A report out today calls for Whitehall reorganisation to make way for the creation of a new Department for Infrastructure.
The Association for Consultancy & Engineering (ACE) is proposing the creation of a Department for Infrastructure as an alternative to the National Infrastructure Commission plan developed by Sir John Armitt and adopted as Labour party policy.
The ACE says that the key benefit of its plan is to give infrastructure more clout within government.
The ACE is hoping the Conservatives will pick up its alternative policy plan and already has the backing of former transport minister Stephen Hammond, who is on the ACE’s advisory board and was sent back to the backbenches in the July 2014 government reshuffle.
The ACE policy paper – titled Delivering our Strategic Networks: A Department for Infrastructure – proposes a reallocation of responsibilities across Whitehall departments.
A new Department for Infrastructure (DfI) would bring together the regulatory bodies Ofgem, Ofwat, Ofcom, ORR under a single sponsoring department. It would absorb responsibility for Infrastructure UK from the Treasury.
The Department of Energy & Climate Change would be abolished with energy becoming part of DfI and climate change moving to Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra). Defra, meanwhile, would hand over responsibility for strategic water and waste issues to DfI.
The Department for Transport would transfer responsibility for strategically significant transport projects to DfI.
The Department for Culture, Media & Sport would lose responsibility for Ofcom and strategically significant digital communications to DfI.
Perhaps surprisingly, however, the ACE does not propose that housing and planning should move to the new department. It says that these would remain with the Department for Communities & Local Government.
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