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Treasury: Infrastructure Cost Review

My right honourable friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Danny Alexander) has today made the following Written Ministerial Statement. The Government have today published the first annual progress report on the three-year infrastructure cost review programme launched in March 2011. Over the past 12 months, the Government have worked with industry to put in place the mechanisms through which real reductions in the costs of constructing economic infrastructure can be achieved and sustained—to enable taxpayers and utility bill payers to get more for less. The programme is on track and the report gives examples of good practice, consistent with the recommendations of the cost review, where individual savings of over £2 billion have been identified. A key measure of success is the application of cost review principles to reduce delivery costs on the UK's priority infrastructure projects and programmes identified in the National Infrastructure Plan 2011. Copies of the document have been deposited in the Libraries of both Houses and are available on the Treasury website at: www.hm-treasury.gov.uk.