The Chancellor should make infrastructure the top priority in this month's spending review, or risk putting economic recovery at risk, the CBI has today asserted.

The business group is calling on Chancellor George Osborne not to ‘repeat the mistakes' of last year's spending round and increase infrastructure spending.

It is calling for short-term action on improving roads, boosting house-building and getting a pipeline of major projects moving.

John Cridland, CBI director-general, said: ‘With more than half of government spending ring-fenced and £11.5bn of cuts required, the Government has to walk a tightrope of making substantial savings, without harming fragile growth.

‘The Chancellor must prioritise areas that could propel a fledgling recovery and infrastructure investment should be in pole position.

‘If the Government doesn't act now even less infrastructure could be built in the years ahead, as cuts from the last spending round continue to feed through and decisions on major projects remain up in the air.'

Among other demands, the CBI has also called on the chancellor to remove automatic salary increases in the public sector, radically reform public services and ensure greater sharing of services across local authorities.

It says increases shared services should become the default option for Whitehall and local authorities to save up to £600m a year by 2020.

The CBI is specifically calling for: