On Infrastructure

Over the last 15 years, digital mobility platforms for ride hailing like Uber, bike sharing like Beryl, e-scooter rental like Lime and journey planning apps like Citymapper have become common in urban societies. They are often seen as ‘disrupting’ the organisation of existing public transport systems and creating competition. Yet these platforms can be strategically incorporated into existing systems by public authorities aiming to address public policy priorities and improve systems. They also address sustainability challenges, especially in accelerating the shift away from personal car use.

Passenger transport authorities in metropolitan areas need to assume strategic control over platformised city-regional transport systems to deliver on public policy goals. To do so, they need properly devolved powers and the opportunity to steer the development of a platformised city-regional transport system - which entails strategy development across transport services and their supporting infrastructure.

The remaking of metropolitan public transport systems

City-regions globally face a variety of sustainability challenges. These include improving the quality of life of their residents by addressing carbon emissions and poor air quality, while also achieving long-term economic growth. In this context, how to organise the transport infrastructure supporting the movement of people and goods into, around, and out of metropolitan areas, has become a pressing concern.

Responding to this challenge, digital mobility technology has become widespread, offering a variety of ways of moving around urban areas and multiple new mobility services, including mapping and system-wide mobility-as-a-service platforms.

Established bus, tram and rail transport operators have also incorporated digital technologies into their provision. These services are usually accessed by users and passengers on their mobile phones or devices.

Platformised city-regional public transport in England – development and future

The digitalisation of existing metropolitan transport systems is shaped by social interests as well as by technology. As part of our research into how digital platforms are reshaping urban mobility systems, sociotechnical analysis has demonstrated three ways of platformising existing metropolitan public transport systems.

Firstly, in the years following the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and fuelled by venture capital, privately owned ride-hailing and micro-mobility platforms sought to ‘land’ their services in urban areas.

These services sought to expand their area of operation by building networks of users. The operation of digital mobility platforms, as conventionally understood, saw asset-light private companies offer ‘new’ mobility services, which relied on the repurposing of existing assets in tandem with the use of platform technologies.

Cities and urban contexts became primary sites in which dozens of such platforms operated. Yet, many of these have been fleeting in their presence, as was demonstrated by Mobike’s bike-sharing service in Greater Manchester. The variety and volatility of platforms poses problems for how they are coordinated and integrated with existing public transport systems.

Secondly, partly as a response to the problem of coordination and integration, private companies, such as MaaS Global, Citymapper, Moovit, Uber and Google have experimented with attempts to use technology to build new mobility service systems. Controlled by private, profit-seeking platform companies, these systems seek to integrate existing public and private transport services. This means that control of the system shifts towards the company and away from public transport authorities.

Thirdly, in recent years, public transport authorities have recognised that they need to take a more strategic approach to controlling public transport. They must explore how digital technology can re-make metropolitan transport systems. In order to meet sustainability challenges and other public priorities, metropolitan transport authorities are experimenting with how platformisation can support public transport provision at city-regional scale and allow them to gain greater control over the operation of public transport systems. This development is most advanced in the West Midlands, with a publicly funded, publicly controlled Mobility as a Service (MaaS) initiative, due to launch in 2024.

Towards strategic city-regional platformisation

Digital systems and existing transport systems can be organised in different ways but policymakers and public bodies must navigate the tension between contributing to public policy goals and creating new markets and commercial opportunities for private platform providers.

Given this dilemma, there is a need for bodies such as the UK Department for Transport (DfT) to develop a clear position in response. This is particularly important given the multi-billion-pound allocations, through City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements (CRSTS) and other public funding streams, that DfT has devolved to the public transformation of transport systems at city-regional scale.

Control, organisation and infrastructure

In a highly complex system of operators and infrastructures, the key strategic issue from a public authority perspective is how to integrate these in line with public policy goals.

Establishing who controls platforms has profound implications at city-regional scale, where transport authorities must consider how the public good is best served by the opportunities they provide. Strategy at this scale needs to decide how platforms and the existing transport system should be organised and which transport services, infrastructures and sources of data should be under public control. This clearly requires a framework to support challenging and ongoing conversations on this issue within combined authorities and transport authorities, and with national government.

Our framework - the Urban Digital Stack

We have drawn on our research in this area to develop a framework and resources to support officials with this. This framework can help urban policymakers and decision makers in considering key challenges and developing strategies. The concept of the Urban Digital Stack is to provide a multi-layer framework for urban policymakers to think about how multiple platforms should be organised in relation to existing urban public transport systems.

Looking at how multiple platforms can be shaped and organised by existing urban decision makers and public transport systems, we focus on how platforms can add to the existing landscape of urban public transport systems. The tool explores what social and political challenges this raises for the control of existing and digital forms of infrastructure, and implications for the organisation and ownership of data.

The Stack does not provide simple prescriptions. Its purpose is to help urban policymakers and decision makers to think about and to debate key challenges and questions with colleagues and other stakeholders and to support them in developing strategies and plans for responding to the challenge of digital mobility platforms. It can be used to communicate strategy in policy documents or presentations.

Building capability - no simple answers

There is no simple prescription or route map for how the platformisation of transport systems at the scale of city-regions should unfold - and what role public authorities will have in this.

Building capability at city-regional scale is an ongoing challenge. National government should support the long-term funding of transport bodies. They must also create properly devolved powers and allow them the power to develop a platformised city-regional transport system.

Application of the Urban Stack is one tool that could be used to apply lessons more widely as part of Department for Transport best practice.

Michael Hodson is a Professor and Research Director of the Sustainable Consumption Institute at The University of Manchester.

Andrew McMeekin is a Professor of Innovation at The University of Manchester.

Andrew Lockhart was a Research Associate at The University of Manchester Sustainable Consumption Institute.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, NHS England remains in crisis. We are now accustomed to ambulances queuing outside accident and emergency departments, bed shortages, growing waiting lists for elective care, and old, crumbling hospital buildings. Examining the consequences of using private finance to deliver healthcare infrastructure and services, through exploring the expense of privately financed but publicly funded hospital schemes (known as the Private Finance Initiative, or PFI), reveals a lack of visible and joined-up public accountability.

Policymakers should be aware of a shift to a two-tier NHS capital estate as up-to-date PFI hospitals increasingly outshine shabby and dilapidated older hospitals, with a related impact on service delivery. A rise in health inequalities is a likely consequence. Another implication is a lack of transparency around the significance of private financing and its impact on the public purse.

What are the financial consequences of using PFI for hospital buildings?

Expenditure to keep NHS hospitals up to date has been an issue since NHS formation in 1948. Many old buildings are still in use and in a poor state of repair due to structural failure and lack of routine maintenance. Governments in power from 1979 put little investment into hospital infrastructure. From 1997 to 2010, the government addressed the problem by using PFI to deliver 109 hospital projects (around 20% of English NHS hospitals).

PFI hospitals are built using private finance, with government paying the private provider an annual rental charge to cover the cost of building the hospital, and a service charge, which covers operating and maintenance costs. Charges include the finance costs of the debt borrowed to build the hospitals and a profit element for the private partners. Charges increase according to criteria laid down in the contract, which can mean steep increases when inflation is high. Contracts last for between 30 and 60 years.

PFI hospitals are more expensive to operate than non-PFI hospitals, but as there is an enforceable contract in place, the private partners must ensure that PFI hospitals are properly maintained. In contrast, austerity policies since 2010 mean backlog maintenance on non-PFI hospitals, which is not planned maintenance work, but rather the work which should have already taken place, has increased from £4bn in 2012 to £11.6bn in 2023, an increase of 290% and greater than the £8bn allocated by the government in 2022 for capital investment to 2030. Of particular concern is an estimate of £6.3m for ‘high’ and ‘significant’ risk backlog.

Research findings – affordability and infrastructure

My University of Manchester research examines affordability issues relating to hospital infrastructure in detail. Whilst PFI charges, in total, only represent around 1.4% of total NHS spend, at local trust level they can create affordability issues.

Some trusts have reduced costs by taking actions on their PFI contracts. Two trusts terminated PFI contracts, reducing their annual operational expenditure, although it is an expensive process, with significant financial penalties being paid to break the contract. Another trust went bankrupt over the high cost of its two PFI hospitals, in part because the finance costs were much higher than the average, thereby pushing up the deficit. Affected hospitals had to be transferred into other nearby trusts.

A further hospital managed to exercise a break in its soft Facilities Management element, reducing its service payment by around £9m per year. Barts Health NHS Trust, which has the UK’s largest NHS PFI scheme, decided at the time of construction not to fit out two whole floors of the Royal London Hospital in a bid to reduce operational costs from the start. Even with this decision, actual PFI charges remained higher than originally projected.

NHS trusts usually consist of more than one hospital. Frequent mergers take place between trusts, often with the aim of meeting financial challenges. At trust level, financial decision making is therefore likely to prioritise PFI over non-PFI hospitals because the former’s costs must be paid due to the binding legal contract with the private provider.

My University of Manchester research examined the financial position of the trusts with the five largest PFI schemes, all of which also contain non-PFI hospitals, and their related private partners over the period 2017-2022. Four trusts experienced mergers during the past decade, with one trust undergoing three mergers. All trusts recorded at least one deficit, and four recorded at least three, despite receiving additional COVID-19 income.

Overall, the five trusts show a continuing pattern of recorded deficits and/or rising backlog maintenance, whilst in contrast their PFI private partners were delivering good, low-risk returns for their financiers. Moreover, the outflow of high finance costs plus any profits means less money remains within the NHS for tackling healthcare problems.

What’s the likely future for NHS infrastructure?

We remain in a crisis position, with continued underfunding and a growing pool of poorly maintained infrastructure, yet increasing numbers of patients.

One likely outcome is that a two-tier hospital system may develop in England, as patients who can, will choose to attend modern, well-maintained buildings for elective care, over older, more inefficient structures. Patient choice could ultimately lead to destabilisation and intra and inter-trust tension across the system, dependent on how combinations of PFI and non-PFI hospitals, bed numbers and PFI charges play out in a complex scenario.

Exactly what will happen is difficult to predict. A systematic decline and fragmentation of monitoring and transparency of accountability and evaluation of financial performance over time makes it difficult to properly scrutinise the financial impact of using private finance for hospital infrastructure. However, we do know there are insufficient resources available to permit fair allocation across trusts, meaning that in reality the main choice patients have for prompt treatment is whether they are willing and able to pay for private healthcare. This increases health inequalities.

Recommendations for a robust and reliable NHS infrastructure

The government should seek out examples of best practice in hospital buildings construction and utilisation and share them centrally, so that new fit-for-purpose buildings can be delivered efficiently and at affordable cost. There needs to be greater oversight of the interface between the NHS, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Treasury in relation to the joined-up provision of care.

Many non-PFI hospital buildings are in a poor state of repair and unfit for purpose. Government should set out a policy commitment on a rolling programme of capital investment using public finance, prioritising the replacement of worn-out buildings and addressing the shortage of hospital beds in under-resourced trusts.

Government should ensure total health spending is at least the pre-Covid long term average of 3.8% growth per year, or even better to the level of growth experienced under the last Labour government of 6.7%. This would ensure that NHS trusts containing PFI hospitals can afford to pay the high charges levied by the private sector, whilst maintenance work on non-PFI hospitals can be carried out in a timely manner.

A policy decision to slow down or abolish change and merger across NHS trusts would lead to more stability for financial decision making across regions.

Public accountability and oversight of capital investment in the NHS needs to be strengthened going forward, potentially going beyond the remit of the National Audit Office.

There is great scope for the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee to make recommendations and take actions.  These could include evaluation of the use of private finance and a fair return in healthcare, a challenge to private sector legitimacy and a more transparent allocation of taxpayers’ money to healthcare services.

Anne Stafford is a Professor of Accounting and Finance at the Alliance Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester.

Since 2021, the rapid rise of energy prices has sparked public awareness of energy poverty, with 13% of households in England classed as fuel poor, meaning they are finding it difficult to pay for the energy needed to have a warm home. Additionally, 44% of households in Great Britain are using less fuel (ONS, 2024). Those living in the poorest households were spending three times (7%) the relative proportion of disposable income on gas and electricity than the richest decile (2%) households. Infrastructure challenges in maintaining a warm home include limited availability and choice of housing stock, older homes, and poorer quality materials.

This crisis has shown that governments, at local and national levels, have implemented policies to address energy poverty, including price regulation and tax breaks, limits on disconnections, discretionary financial assistance to vulnerable households and social tariffs for energy efficiency improvements and energy savings. The energy crisis brings to the forefront a wider discussion, providing an opportunity to consider how to develop support mechanisms that appropriately capture the complex and diverse social nature of energy usage going forward.

Infrastructure, energy policy and data

The UK government in 2023 pledged to design infrastructure that future-proofs access to safe, clean and affordable energy for the long term, and to develop policies that address energy efficiency of the housing stock, household income and energy prices. To accomplish this, energy access planning requires recognition of social inequalities, especially for household income patterns. Data underpins decision-making in infrastructure projects, but the data itself can also underpin ongoing social injustices and inequalities in access.

Many policies rely on indexes that combine various sources of data. The Index of Multiple Deprivation is the official measure for relative deprivation in England, including factors such as income, employment, housing, crime, education, health, and living environment to produce a relative scale of highest deprivation. However, the sources of data are not published and therefore not replicable. Complex usage of energy – driven by gender, age, disability, employment, and geographical considerations – leads to different vulnerabilities that are not well captured within a relative scale of general deprivation.

Energy poverty – a nuanced picture of the most affected

It is important that decision makers recognise that energy poverty is distinct from general deprivation, which has traditionally been used as a proxy. Extensive research into energy poverty shows that certain demographics are disproportionately affected by hikes in energy costs. These nuances do not fit broadly into the general deprivation data models, which inform policy. People can and have altered their energy consumption during this recent energy price crisis to accommodate the financial strain, at the expense of health and wellbeing, thereby underrepresenting the extent of energy poverty if mitigation measures were not put in place.

The gender pay gap, whereby the average woman earns less than the average man and a higher percentage of part-time workers are women, combined with parenthood, with full-time mothers earning less than full-time fathers, means that one-parent mothers’ households face combined challenges to meet energy needs.

Likewise, households with disabled people and older individuals have lower incomes but differ in varied and acute energy needs, such as requiring energy-intensive equipment. To reduce energy bills in the short run, older people who reduce energy usage may experience worsened health outcomes in the long run, as ‘thermal discomfort’ takes longer to recover from. The UK Government estimated in 2014 that ten percent of winter deaths are attributable to energy poverty – and this is before the energy crisis and price hikes a few years later.

Shifting working patterns, shifting energy use patterns

While energy prices are now declining, the need for energy and its geographical distribution is expected to change to reflect changes in employment patterns. The rise in remote working, where homeworking doubled from 2019 to 2022, means that more workers are using energy at home to work.

Remote workers are estimated to pay more for their energy bills compared to their office worker counterparts. While the average remote workers tend to have higher occupational classifications and earn more than on-site workers, inequalities can exist, as low-wage remote workers spend a higher proportion of their disposable income than their higher paid counterparts.

Policymakers will need to address this growing cost to remote workers as working from home patterns continue and the new government should consider how employers can ensure employees pay for fuel and energy bills equitably.

Geographical inequalities

Lastly, geographically, regions outside of London have as high or even higher average standing charges. As wages in London surpass the national average, households living in other regions face similar or even higher heating bills (in the case of West Midlands and Yorkshire and the Humber) but on lower wages. Intersecting with gender, disability and the changing nature of working patterns, this leads to certain poorer regions with lower wages who face a disproportionately higher relative financial strain to maintaining a warm home.

These social and geographical inequalities are researched thoroughly, but how infrastructure planning takes these into consideration is less clear and, of course, the changing nature of energy usage means that there needs to be more timely information.

Policy pathways – targeted measures versus blunt tools

Key to policies that empower fair and just access to affordable energy is recognition of people’s distinct needs - which may be missed within the reliance on large statistics. Statistics remain a useful guide to highlight more vulnerable areas, but a proposed complement is to design interventions at the local level, based on extensive consultation with residents who are best placed to explain their personal circumstances and the realities of the existing housing stock in the area.

There are a myriad of government and regulatory bodies entrusted to ensure fair energy access. A consultation, led by a national body such as the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government supported by local authorities, could investigate the extent of modern household energy needs.

Local authorities currently carry out energy projects in diverse ways, and these efforts can only continue with secured funding from central government to acknowledge these diverse social needs. This feeds into cross-working between government departments and the sharing of information to devise strategies, policies, and interventions. This collaboration is crucial if the goal is to design infrastructure that recognises these social drivers, which intersect with the traditional three pillars of housing stock, household income, and energy prices.

To build on this, one way to operationalise this understanding of changing needs would be to establish working groups and co-produce with third-sector partnerships, to raise awareness and design responses to acute energy needs driven by social factors. A potential outcome could be the creation of a national energy usage index - a hybrid index using quantitative findings supplemented with local consultations and interventions, recognising different energy pattern usages of the population. This index could inform local authorities, the housebuilding industry, and planning committees to address acute energy needs driven by social infrastructure needs.

Consultation measures and targeted initiatives can be a costly investment in both resources and time, compared to employing a blunt quantitative tool in developing infrastructure. However, statistics cannot adequately capture the intricate social usages in different circumstances.

With the increasing unsustainability of energy costs, the changing and heightened need for energy, and the implications for designing infrastructure that promotes equitable access, now may be the time for nuanced discussions in infrastructure planning to ensure just and equitable access.

 Isabelle Bi-Swinglehurst is an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Postdoctoral Fellow at the Alliance Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester.

Extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and intensity, whilst climate change projections point towards further, largely negative, impacts on humans and nature. In response, climate change adaptation has become a stronger component of policy agendas globally. As part of this response, climate risk assessments are routinely undertaken across a wide variety of sectors and spatial scales. There is a strong case for such assessments to embed into green infrastructure (GI) decision making, to support the planning, design and maintenance of GI in a future characterised by a changing climate.

Green infrastructure is at risk from climate change

There is growing evidence of the environmental, economic and social benefits offered by GI to urban areas. As a result, policy frameworks at national and local levels commonly advocate GI measures, and there is increasing recognition that GI should be considered a form of critical infrastructure alongside the likes of transport, water supply and electricity generation infrastructure.

These forms of critical infrastructure are impacted by extreme weather and climate change hazards. Because of this, related risks are commonly assessed, and adaptation responses are subsequently implemented in an effort to maintain the services that they provide to society. For example, identification of risk to rail lines from flooding and sea level rise helps to target measures needed to protect the network from such hazards.

GI is critical to urban areas - and is also at risk from the changing climate. Researchers are only just beginning to consider this topic, often focusing on current weather extremes rather than future climate change projections. Examples include studies exploring how high temperatures and drought conditions impact urban trees and woodlands, which have identified negative impacts including reductions in leaf cover and increased exposure to pest species. Soil moisture deficits can also stress urban grassed areas, leading to dieback of grasses.

These impacts can, in turn, compromise the ability of urban GI to provide the benefits and services it is valued for, notably those linked to adaptation to climate change such as cooling air and surface temperatures and enabling rainwater capture and absorption.

Green infrastructure risk assessment – our research study

Despite the threat that climate change poses to urban GI, approaches to assess related risks spatially, at a scale that can inform local decision making, are not available. A recent study involving researchers based at The University of Manchester represents the first example of such a risk assessment.

The study assessed risk to Greater Manchester’s (GM) grassed areas from an extended period of low water availability. Grassed areas are an important element of GM’s urban GI and are more susceptible to harm from water deficits than trees.

The year 2018 was selected to base the risk assessment around. A high-pressure system over the UK during the summer of 2018 brought exceptionally high temperatures and low rainfall - conditions projected to become more common in GM with the intensification of global heating. This offered the ideal case study to explore climate change related risks to grassed areas across the city-region.

Greater Manchester grasslands – spatial risk assessment

This study identified specific areas of GM’s grasslands where there is a high risk of grasses dying back under conditions of low water availability.

Soil characteristics linked to their capacity to hold water stand out as a key factor in determining levels of risk. Also, being surrounded by highly built-up urban landscapes makes grassed areas more sensitive to low water availability as this reduces the water recharge capacity of soils, thereby intensifying levels of risk.

However, to help maintain their functionality under such conditions, grassed areas can be irrigated with ground water. The presence of ground water close to the surface indicates higher capacity to adapt to low water availability conditions, and therefore presents the opportunity to moderate the severity of associated risks posed to grassed areas. These factors were evaluated at a fine scale to generate a spatial assessment of risk to GM’s grassed areas from low water availability (see Figure 1).

Implications, interventions and inequalities

A key role of GM’s GI is reducing fluvial (from rivers and streams) and pluvial (excess surface water runoff that exceeds the capacity of natural and manmade drainage systems) flood risk. This is because it can capture and absorb rainwater, thereby reducing the volume of water reaching rivers and streams, delaying flood peaks, moderating the extent of surface water runoff and ultimately reducing flood risk.

These GI functions are negatively impacted by conditions of low water availability as grasses die back, exposing underlying soils which dry out and harden. This is concerning for GM, where flooding is a key hazard facing the city region. Intense rainfall events during the summer months, which has the potential to cause flash flooding, is a specific threat. The risk assessment output (Figure 1) enables targeted interventions to reduce this risk in areas of greatest need, for example where GI at high risk from low water availability is located in built up areas threatened by pluvial flooding.

This study also identified that grassed areas within the most highly deprived areas of GM were more likely to be at high risk from low water availability conditions compared to grassed areas within GM’s least deprived areas. This is indicative of broader socioeconomic inequalities concerning access to urban GI. Given the role that GI can play in enhancing health and wellbeing, there is a requirement for planners and decision makers to ensure that GI in areas suffering from deprivation is adapted to climate change.

Ways forward for green infrastructure

Enhancing the resilience of GI to climate change should be considered consistently and systematically, not just in GM but in cities and urban areas across the world. University of Manchester research highlights that analysing and spatially visualising patterns of extreme weather, and climate change risk to urban GI, can support related planning and decision making.

This is particularly important at present in the UK, with local authority GI budgets stretched. New GI investments and interventions need to be climate resilient, especially as the likes of public gardens and street trees are long lasting features of urban environments. Specific approaches that should be considered include providing capacity to irrigate GI and developing planting schemes that are more resistant to low water availability.

Concerning existing GI resources, our mapping exercise described above can help to prioritise where local interventions should take place, and this approach could usefully be developed and rolled out to other local authorities. Irrigation approaches are an important part of the response, as are schemes to modify surface cover, e.g. planting trees within grassed areas. Such interventions should be prioritised in areas of social and economic deprivation, where additional benefits can be captured from enhancing GI resources.

Policy direction is needed at the national level, particularly from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, to stimulate local planning authorities to recognise and act to reduce the risk of climate change to urban GI. Organisations such as Natural England must also help to build knowledge and awareness of climate change risk amongst GI stakeholders.

This is crucial, given the threat of climate change to GI, and the need to maintain and enhance the benefits and services that this form of critical infrastructure can offer to urban areas over the coming decades. 

Jeremy Carter is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Planning at The University of Manchester.