CECA tells ministers Budget pipeline pledge must come with procurement dates, not totals

The Civil Engineering Contractors Association (CECA) has welcomed the 2026 Budget's commitment to an updated Infrastructure Pipeline and fresh capital for the National Wealth Fund, but urged ministers to turn headline figures into funded, procurable schemes.

CECA said the £20.4bn announced on 28 October, from additional capital for the National Wealth Fund and the British Business Bank, could help unlock investment and support growth across the UK. HM Treasury's Budget press notice confirmed the two bodies will receive the additional £20.4bn.

The trade body said the Budget, delivered by Chancellor John Healey, also confirmed that an updated Infrastructure Pipeline will be published before the end of the year.

Ben Goodwin, CECA director of policy and public affairs, said: "For CECA members, the test of this Budget is how quickly its commitments become procurement opportunities and work on the ground."

What CECA wants in the pipeline

CECA said the value of the updated pipeline will depend on whether it gives industry enough detail to plan recruitment, apprenticeships, equipment investment and bidding resources.

According to the association, that means the document must set out procurement dates, routes to market, project-level workforce data and the funding status of each project, rather than a headline total.

Goodwin said the extra capital for the National Wealth Fund was welcome and that the government was right to emphasise protecting capital investment.

But he added: "But financing capacity cannot replace public funding when there is no commercial revenue stream. Ministers should be clear how today's measures support the wider programme."

Apprentices and planning

CECA also welcomed what it described as the expectation that apprentices make up at least 3% of the workforce on large government construction and infrastructure projects. Goodwin said government must ensure that taking on and supervising apprentices is affordable for contractors, particularly specialist firms and SMEs.

On planning, he said faster decisions matter but the planning bodies behind them need resources to turn reform into delivery. He described the additional capacity funding for mayors as a step in the right direction.

Background

The response tracks the representation CECA submitted to HM Treasury ahead of the Budget, announced on 9 September 2026. In it the association said the priority for Budget 2026 should be to protect productive capital investment.

Its first recommendation was to protect stable, long-term infrastructure investment and translate the 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy into a funded, sequenced delivery programme. The submission also called for continual improvement of the UK Infrastructure Pipeline to give contractors practical, reliable and long-term market certainty.

The current pipeline, published by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) on 9 March 2026, details 734 planned projects covering £718bn of investment. NISTA estimated an annual average workforce of between 629,000 and 706,000 over the next five years, and said the March edition represented a significant increase in project value compared with July 2025.

According to CECA, the first NISTA pipeline in July 2025 covered around 780 public and privately led infrastructure projects worth more than £530bn, to be delivered over ten years.

CECA has more than 300 members across six English regions and the devolved nations of Scotland and Wales. It says its members carry out an estimated 70-80% of all civil engineering activity in the UK.

The updated Infrastructure Pipeline is due before the end of 2026.