Financing and delivering the UK’s infrastructure pipeline

Writing recently in the Financial Times, John Armitt, chair of the Public Private Partnership Commission and former chair of the National Infrastructure Commission, made the case that Britain’s infrastructure problem isn’t ambition. It’s delivery: major projects delayed, re-costed, and stalled by short-term political interference, and a pressing need for independent oversight and private capital to get building at pace again.

The economic case for getting this right is significant. Oxford Economics analysis shows that each £1 of additional public investment in infrastructure, when delivered effectively, generates £3.30 of wider benefit to the economy.

With the collaboration of the French Chamber of Commerce and Societe Generale, Oxford Economics convened senior executives from across the UK infrastructure and construction sector to discuss the findings of Half-Built Britain: Unlocking the Nation’s Infrastructure Growth Plans, a report commissioned by the Construction Plant-hire Association.

The UK’s National Infrastructure Pipeline runs to hundreds of billions of pounds in planned investment over the next decade. But announced spending is not the same as funded and delivered infrastructure, and the gap between the two has real consequences for productivity, growth, and competitiveness.

This roundtable brings together those responsible for sponsoring, financing, constructing, and advising on the pipeline of infrastructure projects. It asks where some of the real barriers and constraints on delivery lie and examines what would need to change to unlock private capital at scale.

Readers will find a candid assessment of what’s really holding UK infrastructure back, where responsibility for fixing it sits, and the leadership and reforms participants believe are needed to close the gap between ambition and delivery.