THE VOICE OF THE INDUSTRY
UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveiled the Autumn Budget on October 30.
UK Autumn Budget accelerates need for funding reform in Northern Ireland CEF CHIEF EXECUTIVE MARK SPENCE LOOKS AT NEW PROCUREMENT AND BUILDING REGULATION RULES, AS WELL AS THE IMPACT OF THE AUTUMN BUDGET ON NORTHERN IRELAND’S CAPITAL BUDGET AND SPENDING PLANS…
FOCUS SHIFTS TO EXECUTIVE’S SPENDING PLANS As we move into 2025, much of our early-year focus will be on responding to the Executive’s draft Budget for 2025/26. This will then be closely followed by the UK Government announcing the outcome of its Comprehensive Spending Review 2026-29. This announcement will enable the Executive, for the first time in over 15 years, to set a multi-year budget and we will be pressing ministers to do this as soon as is practicable, given the benefits of this to the planning and delivery of
Our engagement on the issues facing homebuilding has refocused on the back of the outcome of the new Labour Government’s first Budget in October. While the £270m increase in the
2025/26 - £637m - the Executive would need to make significant reductions to the capital budgets of a number of departments. We do not believe that to be a sensible or sustainable approach. We therefore reiterated our view, and that of the NI Audit Office from their report earlier this year, that as the Executive moves towards consulting on how it will spend its 2025/26 Budget, it must a establish a review of how NI Water is funded, given how crucial that investment is to wider economic activity such as homebuilding and protecting our environment.
NI Executive’s capital budget in 2025/26 to £2.2bn is to be
welcomed - representing a year-on- year increase of 6.6% - it doesn’t, in our view, represent enough of an uplift to deal with the biggest challenge that the Executive faces - the need to reverse the decades of underfunding of our water and wastewater system. In order to fund NI Water to its required Price Control need in
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