16 March 2007
The cost of building and improving the country's major roads is accelerating faster than the average motorway driver, the National Audit Office said this week.
Its report, Estimating and monitoring the costs of building roads in England, published on March 15, considers road projects planned between 1998 and 2021, with a total estimated cost of £13bn.
It found that the third of projects so far completed (36 of 103) had cost an average of 40% more than the original estimates.
However, this fell to 6% once the government had juggled the figures to include VAT, inflation and a contingency element.
The remaining 67 schemes are likely to end up an average of 27% above the estimates.
The NAO found that estimates were often made without sufficient information on the design, scope and timing of the final scheme.
But the report noted that the Department for Transport had been able to absorb the higher costs on some schemes because other projects had been delayed.
Around a quarter of those due to be started by the end of 2005/06 had not begun.
Auditor general Sir John Bourn said: 'The Department for Transport and the Highways Agency need to define more clearly the risks to estimates at the point schemes enter into the programmes.'
PFmar2007
