Select committee: Transport Committee
Recommendation 7
Second Report - Major transport infrastructure projects
Published 29 Sep 2021
Paragraph 36
Addressed to Department for Transport
Transport Committee Major transport infrastructure projects: appraisal and delivery All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Government agencies have repeatedly delivered major transport infrastructure projects that exceeded the specified cost and/or delivery date. Senior management of those Government agencies were apparently unaccountable for such overruns. Senior management of Government agencies with ultimate responsibility for project delivery must be incentivised to avoid cost and/or time overruns. The senior management of Government agencies with responsibility for delivering major infrastructure projects should be subject to a formal duty immediately to notify the relevant Select Committee in cases in which cost and/or time ceilings will be exceeded.
From: Transport Committee, Second Report - Major transport infrastructure projects (HC 24), paragraph 36, 29 September 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 24 January 2022 (deadline 29 November 2021).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government accepts some recommendations, partially accepts others and disagrees with a formal mechanism for additional parliamentary scrutiny of project overruns.
- On the National Infrastructure Strategy, it "partially agrees" and says "there is not enough evidence to justify amending the NIS at this stage", while longer-term impacts of COVID-19 remain uncertain.
- It accepts the recommendations on defining "levelling up" and on a worked example. The Levelling Up White Paper will set out a definition, and the Department will publish case studies on major transport investments in 2022.
- It accepts the principle of cost and schedule ranges, but disagrees with a formal trigger for additional parliamentary scrutiny, saying existing arrangements exist and a trigger "would complicate DfT's role as Project Sponsor and duplicate the function of existing fora".
- On a transport infrastructure delivery plan, it "partially agrees" but says it does "not plan to publish a single delivery plan", pointing to other publications including a Levelling Up White Paper and the Integrated Rail Plan.