To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what funding his Department has earmarked for growth areas to ensure that they have the resources required to meet the demands of a growing population.

Apart from the new £200 million Community Infrastructure Fund for transport projects to facilitate new housing development, my Department has taken account of the benefits that particular projects would have for the four growth areas when considering individual proposals, rather than set aside specific parts of national budgets to spend in those areas.

Our latest estimate of recent and planned expenditure on local authority and Highways Agency major transport projects that will support the growth areas is about £3.5 billion. This includes, for example, the cost of a number of Local Transport Plan projects that have been provisionally accepted for DfT funding and therefore assumes that they will obtain all necessary statutory approvals as well as satisfying the Department's detailed scheme assessment requirements.