ICE says funds must be ringfenced to protect UK infrastructure

The Government must ensure funds are ringfenced if it is to protect the UK’s critical infrastructure, according to a new report from the ICE.

The State of the Nation: Defending Critical Infrastructure, released this week, says infrastructure maintenance is currently funded by revenue budgets under pressure from financial cuts.

The report draws on oral and written evidence from over 70 sources, including UK infrastructure asset owners, regulators, agencies and service providers.

It identifies and explores the main threats to the UK’s infrastructure networks – system failure (through underinvestment and neglect), climate change and terrorism – and concludes that, despite efforts being made through the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) to reduce vulnerabilities to terrorism and other national security threats, the threats from climate change are only just beginning to be considered and the threats from system failure are barely focussed on at all.

Leader of the ICE’s inquiry Alan Stilwell said: “We need to recognise that the UK’s infrastructure assets form an interdependent network, in which a single failure can cascade across the network rendering otherwise unaffected sectors inoperable”.

Read the whole report at http://www.ice.org.uk/state_of_the_nation.