Infrastructure survey 2011
In the summer of 2011 the CBI conducted the first of its annual business surveys in partnership with KPMGlooking into the state of UK infrastructure
In partnership with
Read the full survey (pdf)
With responses from 477 businesses, the survey highlighted just how important infrastructure is to business investment decisions and how urgently we must attract investment to upgrade parts of our infrastructure in order to keep the UK globally competitive.
Making the Right Connections: CBI/KPMG Infrastructure Survey 2011, assesses the state of the UK's infrastructure and highlights how critical quality infrastructure is to companies' decisions about where to invest and their ability to compete.
Half of companies think the UK's transport network has become worse in the last five years, while less than a fifth (18%) say it has got better. Nine in ten express concern about the security of energy supply over the next ten years.
The link to sustained economic recovery is clear, as the survey shows, most companies rank the quality and reliability of energy (81%) and transport (81%) infrastructure as significant or very significant to future investment decisions.
The Government's own National Infrastructure Plan acknowledges that £200bn of infrastructure investment is needed in the next five years alone, with 70% expected to come from the private sector.
Other key findings in the CBI/KPMG survey include:
- Four-fifths (79%) of firms are satisfied with links to EU markets, but they are far less happy with links to emerging markets, such as the Far East and South America. Just 59% think the UK's links to these countries are satisfactory, while a full two-fifths (41%) are dissatisfied.
- Two-thirds of businesses (65%) said Britain's local road network has deteriorated in the past five years.
- Commuter rail also got a 'thumbs down' from firms, with nearly half (46%) feeling it has worsened and just 22% seeing improvement.
- Almost all respondents (95%) were concerned about the rising cost of energy in the next five years, and nine out of ten (89%) were worried about the security of the UK's energy supply.
- The UK's digital infrastructure fared much better, with 73% of firms seeing improvement in broadband networks in the past five years. Waste and water services were also judged, on balance, to have improved since 2006.
