Recommendation 8

The Treasury told us that, following from the OVFM’s report, for mega- projects it proposes to fund a feasibility stage which will be necessarily long enough to clarify objectives and go through the various business case processes, before setting out publicly what the project intends to do. It explained this stage would be more substantial than it is currently, and we noted this could take months or even years.13 It also told us that there will be a staged approvals process as recommended by the OVFM, where funding will only be provided from the Treasury to get to the next stage of approval once the mega-projects decision panel is satisfied that the project is able to proceed.14 The Treasury told us that a “go slow to go fast” approach would encourage both faster and more reliable delivery of projects.15