Air traffic control, school buildings, the railways, potholes in the roads, leaking water pipes, local electricity networks failing when the wind blows from the wrong direction. Why does it feel that everything in Britain is broken? The real problem is a lack of capital maintenance. The assets need to be maintained and fixed when they break, paid for from current spending – not from new investment. Avoiding capital maintenance to save money is short-sighted. A functioning society and a functioning economy need the core infrastructures to be kept in a good condition, and the costs of not doing so are asymmetrically high.

Part of the blame lies with the regulators for not forcing utility companies to pay for the maintenance. But we don’t want to pay higher taxes or higher customer bills to restore the currently poorly maintained infrastructures. This problem can be solved, if we can learn to live within our means in the sustainable economy. To do this, we need a full audit of the assets we have and to budget for the long-term costs of maintaining them continually and properly.