The announcement comes ahead of Chancellor George Osborne’s autumn statement tomorrow. The majority of the investment funding is expected from a combination of leading British pension funds and Chinese investors.

Under the National Infrastructure Plan initiative, both private investors and the government will back social and economic schemes during the next ten years.

In an interview with the BBC, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander said the Government was putting the new arrangement with private pension funds in place to try and unlock pension fund money to go into infrastructure. The Treasury is hoping that £20bn of the £30bn earmarked for the initiative will come from the National Association of Pension Funds and the Pension Protection Fund.

Construction sector calls for new funding models for infrastructure

Last week an alliance of seven leading UK construction trade bodies, made up of over 40,000 companies and thousands of built environment professionals, published a report calling for new finance models for infrastructure to unlock growth in UK construction and the wider economy.

The Unlocking Growth in UK Construction report underlines the importance of the construction industry and how it can help return the UK to economic growth. The study calls for the government to introduce new models for financing major buildings projects and increase lending to construction firms.

Alasdair Reisner, a spokesman for the industry group, said:

“This report shows that there are concrete measures the government can take to unlock growth in the construction sector, which is itself responsible for more than 7 per cent of all UK economic output.

“It is of crucial importance that the government acts now to reduce bureaucracy in our sector, remove blockages in the pipeline, identify new funding models for infrastructure and ensure that banks are lending sufficiently to both businesses and first time buyers. This report is an example of what can be achieved through industry co-operation in identifying the barriers to growth.

“It is no surprise that construction firms identify a lack of funding as a barrier to growth in the sector, given the current economic climate. However, by canvassing a wide range of industry opinion, Unlocking Growth in UK Construction identifies specific actions that government may take that will enable the construction sector to play its part in returning the UK to sustainable economic growth.”

Members of the trade bodies were surveyed and asked to indicate what they considered to be the main barriers to growth in the UK construction industry.

The Construction Alliance consists of the following organisations:

• Association for Consultancy and Engineering
• Civil Engineering Contractors Association
• Construction Products Association
• Federation of Master Builders
• Institution of Civil Engineers
• National Federation of Builders
• Scottish Building Federation