The Scottish Government has announced that its Infrastructure Investment plan - which delivers housing, hospitals, schools and transport infrastructure projects - is set to see a further £1 billion worth of investment.

The extra investment has been possible by extending the Scottish Government's Non-Profit Distributing funding method.

Finance Secretary John Swinney made the announcement alongside the allocation of UK Budget Barnett consequentials for Scotland. Among others, these funding allocations include:

• An extra £31 million capital funding over the next two years for local government to further develop the capital infrastructure needed to increase early learning and childcare provision. This will bring the total capital investment to £91 million.
• £2 million over two years to provide further support for those affected by the UK Government's programme of welfare reform.

Finance Secretary John Swinney stated:

Whenever there has been an opportunity to further invest in our economy, this Government has taken it. That is why I am pleased to announce today a number of measures that will boost our economy, create jobs, support skills
development and strengthen Scotland's infrastructure.

"We will develop plans to extend our current programme of NPD with an additional £1 billion investment taking us through to 2019 - 20.

This investment will build on the successes of the current programme, delivering colleges, schools, roads, hospitals and community health facilities across Scotland. It will also provide the construction sector with the long-term certainty of a future pipeline of work.

In follow up to the announcement of the extension to the NPD programme, the Scottish Futures Trust will explore with a range of public bodies the development of robust business cases for individual projects. Details of the programme of investments will be shared with Parliament in the Draft Budget in the autumn.

Examples of progress made in the existing NPD programme include the procurement of the M8 / M73 / M74, which only took 23 months from OJEU to Financial Close - much quicker than the average 35 months - and the schools programme continues on track to deliver 67 schools for the original price of 55.