Infrastructure Investment Plan 2021-22 to 2025-26: progress report 2024 to 2025
Fourth annual progress report relating to the Infrastructure Investment Plan 2021-22 to 2025-26 which outlines progress made during the last year on climate change, economic growth, public services, and child poverty as well as major project activity and key infrastructure delivery achievements.
Foreword
I am pleased to publish the fourth annual progress report for the Infrastructure Investment Plan 2021-22 to 2025-26. The report outlines how progress to deliver our infrastructure pipeline over the last year has supported our objectives on climate change, economic growth, public services, and child poverty and sets out our key infrastructure delivery achievements and major project activity.
In the period covered by this report our New Build Heat Standard came into effect meaning that no new buildings constructed under a building warrant from 1 April 2024 will be fitted with gas or oil boilers and instead will be built with clean alternatives. Our Circular Economy Bill was unanimously passed and officially became the Circular Economy (Scotland) Act 2024 which establishes the legislative framework to support Scotland’s transition to a zero waste and circular economy. We transformed our Active Travel delivery system and invested over £157 million across a number of programmes to develop and deliver improved walking, wheeling and cycling infrastructure, and provide support for behaviour change schemes. The second and final phase of the Scottish Zero Emission Bus Challenge Fund awarded £41.7 million to support the introduction of 252 new, zero emission buses and coaches to Scotland’s roads. We invested £169 million in a prioritised enhancements programme for Scotland’s Railway, we continued to progress our decarbonisation plans for Scotland’s passenger rail services, and over £683 million was invested in safely operating and maintaining the trunk road network.
Our three Reaching R100 programme contracts delivered a total of 54,108 contracted premises and an additional 16,460 non-contracted “overspill” premises by February this year, and over 4,900 faster broadband connections have also been delivered thanks to the R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme. Within our Learning Estate Investment Programme (LEIP), three school projects completed and opened last year benefitting 3,300 pupils and six other school projects with a value of £353 million started construction. At the end of December 2024, we had delivered 26,039 homes towards our affordable homes target, of which 77% are homes for social rent, and within the last year £29.8 million was provided to support place-based community-led regeneration in our most disadvantaged communities. By the end of 2024, Scottish Water had invested a total of £847 million to maintain and improve services across Scotland.
Our major capital projects reporting recorded infrastructure projects which completed construction and opened to the public during the last year. These included the Levenmouth Rail project in Fife which reconnected local communities to the railway for the first time since 1969, the Golden Jubilee Surgical Centre in Clydebank which provided an expansion of orthopaedic surgery and endoscopy procedures, the Parkhead North East Hub facility which brings together a number of community health and social care services across different sites, and the Oncology Enabling Projects, Edinburgh Cancer Centre, which will provide vital care and treatment to some of the most unwell patients in Scotland.
Major projects commencing construction during the last year included the Radionuclide Dispensary in North Glasgow which when complete, will continue the manufacture of radiopharmaceutical medicines and the distribution of them to Health Boards in West Central and West of Scotland. The building of HMP Highland in Inverness will increase custody capacity, improve rehabilitation services and provide significant investment to the local area and once completed, will be Scotland’s first net-zero prison. HMP Glasgow, the replacement for HMP Barlinnie, will deliver fit-for-purpose, safe and secure accommodation and will have over 1,000 people on site during peak construction activity.
These projects are being delivered against a continuing back drop of challenging economic and financial conditions. In light of this, we have committed to revisit the pipeline of investment set out in our 2021 Infrastructure Investment Plan. Following the conclusion of UK Government’s multi-year spending review, we will publish a new infrastructure pipeline later this year which will set out the projects which are deliverable within the period up until the next IIP is published.
As in previous reports, I am pleased to report the progress against the recommendations made by the Infrastructure Commission for Scotland in its Key Findings and Delivery reports. These include the publication of Scotland’s First Flood Resilience Strategy which sets out what is needed to make our communities more flood resilient over coming decades.
I look forward to working with all our stakeholders to ensure that collectively we maximise the benefits of infrastructure investment for the people of Scotland.
Shona Robison MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government