Spending Review Fixed Assets: Roads and Railways (Hansard, 8 January 2003)

§ The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Macdonald of Tradeston)

Table 4.1 of 2002Spending Review—Departmental Investment Strategies: A Summary (Cm 5674) records the total value of fixed assets owned by each government department as at 31 March 2001. These figures reflect those given in each department's published resource accounts for 2000–01. A figure of £62,996 million is given for the former Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR). This included some £23 million of intangible assets, £61,084 million of tangible assets and £1,890 million of investments.

The tangible assets included £59,773 million as the net book value of the trunk road network. In general terms, roads that are "open for traffic" are valued on the basis of their estimated depreciated replacement cost. Roads (or parts of roads such as additional lanes) that are still under construction are valued on the basis of the capital expenditure incurred to date on their construction. The last full revaluation of the trunk road network was carried out by professional surveyors, as at 31 March 2000. This valuation was carried out mainly using internal unit costing and physical asset records provided by the Highways Agency. Certain large structures, for example the QEII Bridge, and roadside communications were valued at historic cost, appropriately indexed. For other large structures, insurance valuations were used as the best approximation to the replacement cost. The valuations were indexed to 31 March 2001 to reflect changes in the Road Construction Tender Price Index.

Since privatisation, the main railways assets—the infrastructure and rolling stock— have been held in the private sector and therefore did not appear in the figures for tangible assets held by DETR. However, the figure for total investments included a National Loans Fund loan to the British Railways Board of some £481 million. Various minor shareholdings in the form of special shares in rail-related companies are not valued but are noted in view of the insignificant amounts involved. These holdings are listed in Note 12 of the DETR Resource Accounts 2000–01