capital spending

After a couple of years of crumbling school buildings hitting the headlines there is an increase to £6.7bn in the amount of capital spending allocated for maintenance, replacing school buildings and creating new nurseries places in primary schools.

These involve the establishment of a National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority that will oversee a 10 year strategy for a pipeline of major projects, aligned with a series of Spending Reviews, and long term budgets for capital spending on, for example, buildings, roads and rail.

It is being put in place as a guarantee that an expected significant increase in capital spending is focussed on projects that have the greatest long term returns for the UK economy.

Moreover, the vast bulk of any extra spending allowed by a tweak in the rules will go towards investment, or capital spending – in the likes of school buildings and roads.

Shell, which sparked controversy by sponsoring British Cycling in 2022, said it has "invested £4.2bn in low-carbon solutions last year, which was 23% of its capital spending".