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1. Thread. I never thought reform of the HM Treasury Green Book would be front page news. Well done to @JayMitchinson for making it so. https://twitter.com/JayMitchinson/status/1326649942493048833?s=20
2. The Green Book is crucial for the best practice appraisal and evaluation of UK Government expenditure. Most people agree that we need a coherent framework for considering the benefits of government investments to inform decision-making and demonstrate value for money
3. But there have been longstanding concerns that the Green Book provides a framework that prioritises investment in places that already have successful economies, and is at odds with the levelling up agenda.
4. At @ArupUKIMEA we've given this issue some thought. We have a lot of experience of making the case for government investment in infrastructure & regeneration. We have a stake in the success of all of the UK, i.e. we employ over 1200 people across 8 offices in north of England.
5. Earlier this year we produced a paper to input our views to the debate on the reform of the Green Book. We have discussed this with clients across the UK. You can read it here: https://www.arup.com/news-and-events/new-arup-paper-examines-the-hm-treasury-green-book
6. The Green Book should support levelling-up through greater clarity and transparency of objectives, & by reviewing guidance across Government departments. It should require a stronger focus in the Strategic Case part of project business cases on levelling-up & local objectives
7. The Green Book should promote appraisal of the spatial pattern of impacts (distributional impacts) through clarity on aims & outcomes, capturing wellbeing & social impacts, developing new guidance on cross-sectoral impacts, & integrating appraisal guidance across departments.
8. There should be change in approach to estimating net additionality & job creation of schemes by developing funds with criteria that support levelling-up, reviewing appraisal methods that favour wealthier areas, & promoting better alignment of the strategic and economic cases.
9. V. important point for the north (particularly with HS2 & NPR), we need to improve methods for appraising transformational schemes. Existing methods are not good at capturing all benefits of game-changing projects that fundamentally change economic geography & competitiveness
10. We can use scenarios to capture long-term benefits of transformational schemes, enhance evidence on impacts of these schemes & synergies with other investments, & consider how they grow economy of UK plc (as opposed to current zero-sum game approach of moving growth around).
11. We should acknowledge the importance of climate change in appraisal and refer to it as one of the most important aspects to consider, and develop sound, rigorous, standardised measurements for quantifying climate change impacts.
12. We should increase transparency of decision making by providing guidance in the Green Book on how decisions to invest should be documented, and enforcing this by making this documentation public.
13. And we should improve and promote evaluation of the actual impacts of investments as they are made and schemes start creating benefits. We can learn from past projects and international case studies.
14. But a really important point is that whilst the Green Book can definitely be improved, the problems and issues run much deeper...……….
15. The Green Book should be a framework, not a rule book. But the problem is that it is interpreted by separate Whitehall Departments, agencies, and decision makers in a narrow, compartmentalised and inflexible way.
16. To affect strategic change to places we need to integrate investments across transport, housing, regeneration, innovation, skills and so on. Hard when so many funding decisions are taken in a remote, narrow and siloed way by different government departments and agencies.
17. Which is why we need real devolution. There is a strong case for local areas to set out their own frameworks (local Green Books if you like) for decision-making, in-line with the main principles of the national Green Book.
18. A final point, it is OK for politicians to prioritise investment in projects that don't have the highest BCRs (as @CentreforCities & @thomasforth have pointed out several projects in London with low BCRs have been funded), but they should be transparent about this and why.
19. In summary, reform the Green Book, but that alone is not enough. We also need fundamental reform of the structures and culture of decision-making to be more integrated, flexible and local. More devolution is essential. End of thread (thanks for reading).
