West Midlands’ City Region Board, which includes representatives of local businesses, as well as the six local highway authorities, has asked officers to prepare a business case for the ‘accelerated development zone’ proposal.

The conurbation has argued that a £4.6bn package of transport improvements is needed, but dropped plans to bid for Transport Innovation Fund money (Surveyor, 9 August 2007).

The concept was proposed in a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Core Cities group of regional cities, which found that other funding mechanisms proposed by the Government were ‘unlikely to generate sufficient additional revenue to fund substantial infrastructure’.

The new idea has the backing of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which also sees it as a preferable way of generating additional income to levying a 2p supplementary business rate on local firms.

The Core Cities report, Unlocking city growth, highlighted, however, that accelerated development zones would require the Treasury to agree to local hypothecation of revenues, and would carry a ‘substantial risk’ that income generated would be less than estimated.

That report mooted a more focused, accelerated development zone to deliver the Birmingham Eastside regeneration project, which has a relatively small funding gap for infrastructure of £82M. Simon Murphy, the project director, told Surveyor: ‘Our proposal is more ambitious, and is needed to provide upfront cash to plug a significant funding gap for infrastructure we’ve identified as necessary for economic growth.’

The idea chimed with the recommendations of the Eddington review for the Treasury that funding should be focused where it would stimulate economic growth, he claimed.

A Transport and Works Act Order for the Midlands Metro extension is due to expire in 2010, but Centro has advised that this could be lengthened by starting work on a park-and-ride site which was part of the scheme.