[1] Its creation was announced by Her Majesty's Government in the July 2004 White Paper, ’The Future of Transport’.
[2] The fund had two strands for supporting different types of project: Congestion TIF where local authorities bid for funds for their own schemes; and Productivity TIF where the DfT would identify schemes of national importance.
TIF represented a new approach by the Department for Transport (DfT) to allocating some of its budget for England.
The size of their settlement is derived from a formula that relates the funding to a number of factors including population.
Over the period 2006 to 2011, Greater Manchester, a conurbation with a population of about 2.55 million, will receive a settlement of just under £50m a year[7] Although TIF funding was to be smaller in total than the Local Transport Settlement, it will be shared between fewer authorities, so for an individual authority it would represent a very large amount of funding.