In last nights briefing transport secretary Grant Shapps told the construction industry that it must start building major infrastructure projects faster.

Shapps said the sector needed to learn from the Nightingale hospital projects.

He said ‘If building a new hospital takes just two weeks, why should building a new road take as long as 20 years?… We must exploit our new-found capacity to respond at pace and apply it to rapidly improving our infrastructure.’

Shapps went on to say that the government needs to examine why bureaucratic processes made UK infrastructure ‘some of the costliest and slowest in Europe to build… We somehow managed to do things in weeks that would normally take years. Building new hospitals, moving public services online, making instant reforms and fast-tracking new laws. We want to ensure we can maintain this momentum.’

Shapps revealed that Highways England had completed £200m of work in April, while Network Rail had finished £550m of projects in the same month.