Infrastructure investment means striking a crucial balance - short-term affordability versus long-term resilience.

Director of Corporate Affairs and Investor Relations, Sarah Heald believes, we must deliver infrastructure fit for the future, but at a price we can afford now.

This requires the public sector, private sector and local communities to work collaboratively. Together we must ensure our infrastructure is fit for purpose for the decades ahead and the challenges to come.

We are already managing some hugely significant changes in our environment. A changing climate that means more flooding and more risk of drought, an energy transformation that has seen the contribution of low carbon energy rise to over 53% in April - June as it becomes an increasingly important part of the UK's energy mix, and a growing population that demands more and better quality infrastructure. A modern industrial strategy must address all these issues and more.

After all, investing in infrastructure is a social responsibility as well as an economic one. High quality infrastructure provision can raise living standards, it can improve health and well-being through reduced costs and travel time; it can reduce pollution, better connect us and address our long-standing productivity challenge.

Productivity is where infrastructure meets skills and we know that the two together are the keys to a strong economy. We used to be famous for our apprenticeships and on the job training. We lost that somewhere along the way to prosperity, but now we see once again a serious commitment from Government to apprenticeships and technical education. Businesses must step up to the plate, use the impetus of the apprenticeship levy and show their corporate citizenship by providing new and exciting career opportunities. We must invest in our people.

Modern Britain needs a modern workforce, equipped for the workplace of the future. We need skills we didn't need a generation ago, but the next generation won't be able to function without. This is going to be a huge, collective, concerted effort.

Investing in infrastructure, improving living standards and upskilling our workforce - these are all vital in delivering a successful economy, a successful society and a successful Global Britain.

It's time to put this strategy into action.

Pennon Group plc published this content on 02 October 2017 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein.
Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 02 October 2017 14:44:07 UTC.

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