The Yorkshire and Humber Region has suffered from a long standing lack of strategic infrastructure investment. This is felt especially in terms of the Regions transport network and housing stock.

Based on the 2007/08 public expenditure by region figures Yorkshire and Humber receives public expenditure of £7,387 per head compared with an English average of £7,535. See Treasury Report here.

A legacy of past under-investment serves to constrain the region’s potential, having an adverse impact on economic performance, the quality of life and the standard of the environment, with wider impacts for the growth of the national economy and the role of Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford and Hull as regional cities.

The Region will continue to provide evidence to demonstrate to Government that in order to deliver the outcomes in the RSS significantly more Central Government funding is required. However, to help address these concerns, the Region needs to maximise the generation of resources under existing mechanisms. We also need to ensure better alignment between investment programmes so that funding in the Region goes further.

The profile of infrastructure planning and delivery has been recently raised with the publication of PPS12 and the requirement for local authorities to prepare infrastructure plans as part of their Local Development Framework evidence base.

Further information is available on the following pages:

• An overview of infrastructure planning and useful links
• How Regional Bodies can help local authorities prepare an infrastructure plan
• Identifying infrastructure resources – regional capital
• Using standards to identify infrastructure deficits
• Infrastructure costs Infrastructure funding