ICE’s submission to the 2025 Autumn Budget

As part of the government’s Autumn Budget process each year, the Treasury asks for ‘representations’, or evidence, from organisations like the ICE about what should be in the budget.

This year ICE’s submission focuses on the following key messages:

• The 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy, dynamic pipeline tool, establishment of the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) have been welcomed by the infrastructure sector.

• It’s now time to move from strategy to delivery, and the Autumn Budget must resource this shift. Major infrastructure projects are expensive, take significant amounts of time, and can be perceived to fail to deliver on the benefits they promised.

  Getting the right settings in place to improve infrastructure delivery and attract private capital will be crucial to the government building and retaining the public’s trust, delivering on its ambitious infrastructure plans and facilitating the transition to net zero.

• Getting major project delivery right will require the establishment of an internal civil service delivery unit, and meaningful public engagement on the benefits of infrastructure as well as the project and programme level trade-offs required.
• The government has been clear about the need to attract private capital to support its infrastructure ambitions. Doing so will require improved alignment of public and private investment, better commercial skills across government and public engagement on the role of private finance.
• Delivering a £725 billion pipeline of infrastructure projects will require the government to address the current skills gap and ensure that infrastructure supply chains are capable of delivering.

• Delays, reversals and inconsistent plans have held back the UK’s decarbonisation progress. Decarbonisation is key to deliver the government’s central mission of economic growth.

  If the right choices are made, decarbonisation can lead directly to new high-quality jobs and markets, revitalised and high-value supply chains, new economic models, successful new technologies and a range of co-benefits, including improved health outcomes and greater economic and infrastructure resilience.