The Second National Infrastructure Assessment: Charts from the Baseline Report

In June 2021, the Commission carried out social research, with a range of respondents from across the UK, nationally representative by age, gender, region and ethnicity.

The research showed relatively high levels of confidence from respondents from across the UK that infrastructure will meet people’s needs over the next 30 years, with confidence increasing since the first Assessment. Only two sectors – flood resilience and waste – had lower than 70 per cent confidence, with the digital sector performing particularly strongly. This social research will shape the Commission’s approach to the second Assessment.

Economic infrastructure sectors generate a major part of the UK’s current emissions – in 2019, direct emissions from the energy, transport, waste, and wastewater sectors accounted for over 66 per cent of all UK greenhouse gas emissions.

In June 2021, the Commission carried out social research, with a range of respondents from across the UK, nationally representative by age, gender, region and ethnicity.

The research showed relatively high levels of confidence from respondents from across the UK that infrastructure will meet people’s needs over the next 30 years, with confidence increasing since the first Assessment. Only two sectors – flood resilience and waste – had lower than 70 per cent confidence, with the digital sector performing particularly strongly. This social research will shape the Commission’s approach to the second Assessment.

While the legally binding net zero and sixth Carbon Budget targets only refer to total UK emissions across all sectors, the government has set out illustrative sectoral ranges for emissions reductions in its Net Zero Strategy. These ranges are similar to the illustrative roadmaps produced by the Climate Change Committee to meet both the sixth Carbon Budget and net zero target. The Commission uses these illustrative roadmaps as guidance for the expected decarbonisation path in its infrastructure sectors.

In 2019, greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector stood at around 165 MtCO₂e, or 33 per cent of total UK emissions that year. Emissions from transport broadly fall into two categories:

• surface transport, which emitted around 115 MtCO₂e in 2019
• aviation and shipping, both domestic and international, which emitted around 50 MtCO₂e in 2019.

In the Commission’s social research, carried out in June 2021, respondents from across the UK ranked the environment as the most important factor to consider when planning for future infrastructure. The number of respondents who ranked this as their top priority increased since the first Assessment in 2017 by six percentage points.

Figure 3.2 shows the change in service interruptions over time for sectors where data is available. This offers only a partial picture, with fewer energy supply interruptions over time, spikes in sewer flooding linked to extreme weather, and increased rail cancellations.

Internationally comparable data is only available for the UK, rather than England, but the UK’s recycling performance is broadly comparable with similar countries. However, rates have stagnated in recent years.

The extent of regional variation within England appears to be unusually high compared to other countries. England is also unusual in that few of its major cities, apart from London, have productivity above the national average.

Disparities exist within regions. Rural areas often have low productivity, while all regions have some hubs of manufacturing or knowledge intensive services with higher productivity such as those in Cheshire, Sunderland and York. There are disparities within cities too: in Greater Manchester, productivity in Trafford is over a third higher than in Oldham. Use the scroll bar on the right to see more places

The effect of peak time congestion means that transport connectivity is worst in the largest built up areas. In towns with a population of under 100,000, connectivity at peak times has typically been around 10 per cent worse than off peak travel, and virtually never more than 20 per cent worse. It is only cities of more than about half a million people that see the most serious congestion effects, with connectivity 40-50 per cent worse at peak time.

Figure 4.6 shows how interurban connectivity performance, by both car and public transport, varies among built up areas in comparison to their population size. Variation in interurban connectivity is not neatly explained by the size of a place as it is for congestion – large and small settlements both show significant variation. However, it is clear that public transport journeys are significantly slower than those by car, although scores again vary among places of similar sizes.

Consumption of data has grown dramatically over the past decade, both for fixed and mobile connections. Figure A.3 shows that consumption from fixed connections increased from around 25 gigabits per month in 2012 to around 430 gigabits per month in 2020, while consumption of mobile data increased from 0.25 gigabits per month in 2012 to around 4.5 gigabits per month in 2020. Fixed broadband data consumption is significantly higher, which is partly because most consumers typically use it for data heavy activity such as higher resolution video streaming.

Superfast broadband is now almost universally available in the UK, with 97 per cent of premises having access.

The UK is behind other comparable countries in deploying full fibre broadband, but it is catching up with strong progress in recent years. Full fibre coverage has risen to almost 30 per cent in 2021. However, the UK does compare well against other countries on Superfast broadband coverage.

Good progress has been made on delivering 4G mobile coverage and take up is high. Around 92 per cent of UK landmass is covered by at least one operator, up from 78 per cent in 2017. Moreover, at least 98 per cent of premises in the UK receive coverage from all operators.

Over the last decade value for money for consumers in the fixed broadband and mobile markets has increased significantly. Average household spend on telecoms has remained broadly stable in recent years, while  average internet speeds and data usage have risen significantly.  This has led to a corresponding reduction in the unit costs of data from both mobile and fixed connections.

In recent years the UK’s digital infrastructure has performed reliably. Over the last five years, there were an average of 584 incidents per year which had a significant impact on operator networks or services.

Overall, energy customers are satisfied with their suppliers. The Commission’s social research found that 80 per cent of the public felt confident that energy infrastructure in general would meet their needs over the next 30 years, with five per cent being not very confident or not confident at all.

An energy bill is made up of different costs. The cost of buying the electricity and gas (the wholesale cost) form the largest proportion of the bill. It also includes supplier operating costs and profit, the cost of transporting the energy (network costs), policy costs for environmental and social programmes and VAT. Policy costs for environmental and social programmes mostly fall on the cost of electricity rather than gas.

The electricity sector has already made strong progress towards decarbonisation, with emissions falling by around 74 per cent from 1990 to 2019, driven by changes in the generation mix. The change in generation mix has been driven by a combination of decarbonisation policies, including carbon pricing, market conditions such as the reducing cost of renewable generation technologies, and regulations to minimise air pollution impacts.

Homes are becoming more energy efficient. The proportion of homes in the least energy efficient categories (E, F, and G) has fallen from around 40 per cent in 2010 to 13 per cent in 2019, and homes rated EPC C or better rising from 12 per cent in 2010 to 38 per cent in 2019.

Energy network operators are rated on a range of resilience metrics by Ofgem, including metrics on safety, reliability and availability. Average interruptions to electricity supply (measured as minutes lost per customer) have been falling since 1990.

Resource funding has fluctuated annually, averaging approximately £350 million a year over the last decade. Amongst other areas, resource funding supports spending on routine maintenance of flood defences.

Investment in flood risk infrastructure is publicly and privately financed. Central government capital investment between between 2005 and 2019 has varied, but overall has increased from £370 million to £502 million.

Water companies finance capital expenditure, adding new assets and enhancing services.  Spending has been at a relatively stable level but fluctuates in relation to the five year investment cycles that follow Ofwat’s price reviews.

Following water privatisation, consumer bills increased sharply as investment was made to improve services. Ofwat estimates that the main reasons for bill increases have been the costs of maintaining existing networks and complying with environmental and drinking water legislation. The price of a litre of water has been increasing over time but has been reducing since 2014.

The number of serious pollution incidents (those causing major or significant and extensive impact to the environment, people or properties) caused by water companies decreased from 2002 but have plateaued since 2014 at unacceptably high levels.

Unplanned interruptions to water supply are one of the main measures used to assess the everyday resilience of the water supply sector. Since 2012, the average minutes lost per property per year has decreased by one third, though there has been some fluctuation in this downward trend. Average minutes lost reached a minimum point of 11 minutes per property per year in 2016-17, before doubling the following year. This drastic increase was driven in large part by the ‘Beast from the East’ freeze-thaw event.

The number of properties affected by internal and external sewer flooding was reducing until 2018. However, in 2019-20 more than 3,500 properties were flooded internally and almost 24,600 properties were flooded externally in England.

The total volume of waste produced in England has increased over the last decade. In 2010, the aggregate volume was around 170 million tonnes, which when compared to 2018 totals, shows a 12 per cent increase.

Revenue outturn returns by local authorities include the total costs of running local authority waste services. Across waste services, disposal is the most significant cost to the sector, followed by collection. Recycling costs are significantly lower. In 2019-20, local and central government spent a total of just over £5 billion in operational (resource) expenditure.

Total public capital spending on waste management has marginally increased since 2010. There was also a significant spike between 2017 and 2018 caused by Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority buying out its PFI contract.

As the local authority collected waste sector is largely paid for via taxation, with the exception of local authority collected commercial waste, it is possible to calculate the average net revenue burden of waste management services for each household across England. Over the year 2020-21, households paid an average of £29 for recycling, £95 for waste disposal, £42 for waste collection, £31 for street cleaning (excluding highways) and £1 for waste minimisation, with £2 offset by income from trade waste per household. These prices have declined gradually over the last decade.

The main measures of environmental impact across the sector are emission levels and pollution. The waste sector, including energy from waste facilities, generated just over four per cent of total UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, standing at just over 20MtCO2e. Of this, 14 MtCO2e came from landfill sites, around 5 MtCO2e from energy from waste facilities, and 2 MtCO2e from incineration, composting, anaerobic digestion and other forms of mechanical biological treatment. These domestic figures do not account for emissions from exporting waste.

Investment in transport has risen in recent years. This trend is driven by household expenditure on new vehicles, with the trend reflecting that the vehicles bought are more expensive, rather than that the number purchased is increasing.

Investment in national roads has been steadily increasing since 2012 to almost match the investment made in local roads. Annual investment in rail more than doubled between 2010-11 and 2018-19 before falling back in 2019-20. This reflects financing for major new lines like HS2 and Crossrail, as well as programmes of capacity upgrades across the existing national network.

For journeys within urban areas, figure F.5 shows that connectivity is generally better by car than public transport across cities and towns. Car connectivity becomes consistently worse as the population of a built up area increases, as congestion increases with density. A similar trend is visible for public transport connectivity, but with a far greater variation among places of a similar size. This likely reflects a variation in the level of public transport provision between places (often due to historic patterns of investment), along with the congestion associated with larger places.

The ratio between peak and off peak connectivity represents the impact of congestion on travel times. In towns with a population of under 100,000, connectivity at peak times has typically been around 10 per cent poorer than off peak, and virtually never more than 20 per cent poorer (i.e. a score of 0.8 means that congestion reduces connectivity performance by around 20 per cent). It is only cities of more than about half a million people that see the most serious congestion effects, with connectivity 40-50 per cent worse at peak time.

Figure F.7 illustrates how interurban connectivity performance varies among built up areas according to their population size, by both car and public transport. This variation in interurban connectivity is not neatly explained by the size of a place – large and small settlements both show significant variation.

Figure F.8 shows that interurban connectivity by car varies significantly within English regions, but does not show a clear pattern of variation between regions. London performs worse than other regions for car connectivity, reflecting that, as an entirely urban area, car journeys to all other destinations begin with travelling through high levels of congestion.

Figure F.9 shows household expenditure on transport has remained broadly similar over the past thirty years except for a spike in the late nineties. Households spent around £3,000 on motoring in 2018-19. This includes the purchase of vehicles, the cost of spares, accessories, repairs and servicing, and fuel costs. The increase in the late 1990s was driven by purchasing new vehicles, and has since returned to the levels seen in the early 1990s.

• Aviation and shipping accounted for around one third of transport emissions, mainly from international aviation.
• Emissions from rail account for only one per cent of UK transport emissions and have fallen in recent decades despite increased use.

In 2018, emissions of air pollutants from transport accounted for 34 per cent of total nitrogen oxides emissions across the UK, along with 13 per cent of total particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) emissions and 11 per cent of total particulate matter 10 (PM10) emissions. Most are emitted by road transport. For road transport, emissions fell between 1990 and 2018: nitrogen oxides by 79 per cent, PM2.5 by 59 per cent, and PM10 by 47 per cent.