UK Infrastructure Strategy: Bridging Vision and Delivery

15 August 2025

 By Jonny Moore, Managing Consultant

The new UK Infrastructure Strategy sets out a long-term vision to guide national investment and delivery across economic and social infrastructure.  It is part of a broader national and regional framework that includes the UK Industrial Strategy, planning reforms, devolution agreements, and Local Growth Plans — all intended to unlock housing delivery, support the economy, and coordinate investment more effectively.

Crucially, this latest strategy integrates economic and social infrastructure — including transport, utilities, and housing — into a single national framework. In many ways, it echoes what local planning authorities long attempted through Infrastructure Delivery Plans and elevates it to a national scale.

A key institutional change is the creation of NISTA — the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority — bringing together the National Infrastructure Commission and elements of the Infrastructure and Projects Authority into the Treasury. Its purpose is to strengthen project assurance and delivery expertise at the heart of government.

Here we answer some of your questions about what this means  in practice for place-based growth and the role of local government

How Does the Strategy Align with Local and Regional Priorities?

Supporting Planning

The Strategy explicitly commits to a spatial approach to infrastructure delivery, with future iterations expected to set out national spatial priorities. These priorities will need to align with Local Growth Plans and Spatial Development Strategies (SDSs) — a welcome development for those of us seeking consistency between national investment and local ambition.

The Strategy also promises to provide infrastructure evidence to support local decision-making. This is a positive step: strategic planning at local level relies on clarity about infrastructure commitments to confidently identify locations for growth. The certainty that comes from nationally backed delivery plans could be a positive step for preparing SDSs as well as Local Plans.

Bridging the Delivery Gap

While the spatial ambition is clear, questions remain about delivery at  local and regional level. The creation of NISTA within HM Treasury could prove valuable,  particularly if there is a strong link between strategic priorities and government funding decision cycles like Spending Reviews and other funding allocations.

Akey unanswered question is whether this strategy can de-risk infrastructure constraints — particularly in transport, energy, and utilities — where delivery and funding often fall outside local or regional government control. These capacity issues remain a major barrier to sustainable, long-term growth.

Regional Growth and Connectivity

The Strategy recognises the vital connection between infrastructure and regional economic growth, emphasising support for the UK Industrial Strategy and the specific needs of different areas. It references examples such as East West Rail and improved connectivity across the Midlands and the North, which are positive signals. However, it remains to be seen whether this level of strategic coordination will extend beyond high-profile projects and provide consistent support across all regions, including those without devolved powers.

Social Infrastructure

The Strategy includes references to social infrastructure, particularly schools and hospitals, with the School Rebuilding Programme featured prominently. However local infrastructure is  more than just schools and hospitals, and here the Strategyfalls short of addressing the additional capacity required in areas of housing growth. Without aligning education infrastructure delivery with housing trajectories, pressure on local services will continue to undermine new development and ambitions for sustainable communities.

Governance and Funding

One of the more promising proposals is the use of place-based business cases. Making spending decisions considering the range of interventions needed for successful place represents a welcome shift from siloed, single-sector assessments.

Spatial Planning and Data Integration

Delivering infrastructure in the right place at the right time will require integrated spatial planning and alignment across different delivery agencies, policies, and investment programmes. The Strategy identifies NISTA as the coordinating body for this task, with a proposed National Infrastructure Spatial Tool that would consolidate datasets and policy information to identify local needs and constraints.

This is an ambitious but necessary step. Anyone who has worked on infrastructure delivery plans at  local level knows the challenges of coordinating across National Highways, energy and water providers, and Integrated Care Boards. Establishing a common national data platform, accessible to local and regional bodies, could significantly improve the efficiency and consistency of local infrastructure planning and reduce the current reliance on managing uncertainty.

Risks and Caveats

1. Governance and Accountability

While the strategy is owned and overseen by HM Treasury, actual delivery depends on a complex network of organisations, from local authorities and utility providers to national agencies like National Highways and the Environment Agency. This split between strategic accountability and operational delivery  may lead to uncoordinated delivery unless there is strong cross-departmental coordination and clear lines of responsibility. The role of NISTA in bridging these layers will be critical, but remains untested, as this is not a role the organisation provided in its previous incarnation.

2. A Pipeline or a Collation?

It is still unclear whether the proposed infrastructure pipeline will introduce genuinely new investment to support long-term, place-based growth,or whether it largely pulls together existing schemes already in development. Without fresh, forward-looking projects that address future growth pressures (particularly in housing and energy), the strategy may simply re-state current projects.

3. Skills Shortages

The successful delivery of large-scale infrastructure relies heavily on skills availability across planning, engineering, project management, and construction. The strategy currently lacks detail on how it will support capacity building in local government and the private sector, which is a longstanding problem, causing a bottleneck. Without a credible workforce plan, ambitions may falter at the delivery stage.

4. National Ambition vs. Delivery Reality

There is a clear tension between national ambition and the real-world challenges of infrastructure delivery. Past experience, most notably the reduction of HS2 and delays to road and energy schemes, demonstrates the risks of over-promising and under-delivering. Rising costs, planning complexities, and procurement issues all remain unresolved at scale. Local authorities will need clarity and consistency if they are to play their part in delivering infrastructure aligned with this new strategic vision.

Conclusion 

The UK Infrastructure Strategy sets out an ambitious and long-overdue attempt to align infrastructure planning with long-term national priorities  and to better connect that ambition with regional and local delivery. Its focus on spatial planning, coordination through NISTA, and place-based business cases is encouraging. 

However the real test will be in execution: bridging the gap between vision and delivery, enabling capacity at the local level, and ensuring investment reflects the needs of all regions.

Done well, this strategy could finally provide the enabling framework local and regional authorities have long needed. But it will take persistent local advocacy, skilled delivery, and clear governance to make it real.