£43 Billion in Stranded Value: What the CPD Register Tells an Incoming Prime Minister

Kevin Barry MRICS | QuintinQS | June 2026

When former Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill told Sky News in June 2026 that the United Kingdom needs an “infrastructure version of the OBR” — an independent body to appraise, track and publish infrastructure decisions transparently — he was describing a gap that has existed for decades. Politicians announce schemes. Cost overruns accumulate. Schemes are paused, cancelled, or quietly shelved. No independent body measures what that failure costs the economy.

We built the CPD dashboard to make that failure visible. Today we are publishing a new analytical layer — the Economic Transformation Index (ETI) and Stranded Value — applied to all 280 schemes across seven jurisdictions. The headline figure is £43 billion in stranded economic value. That is not cost overrun. It is unrealised potential: economic benefit that exists in theory but is not being delivered because schemes are delayed, paused or cancelled.

Andy Burnham enters No. 10 with an opportunity to act on O’Neill’s challenge in the first weeks of office. This post sets out what the data shows and what four concrete policy actions would address it.

What the CPD Dashboard Is

The CPD register — Continued Prolonged Delays — is an independent tracker of 280 major public infrastructure schemes across seven jurisdictions: Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, London, England, and Australia. Each scheme is tracked for cost at announcement, current cost estimate, delivery status, delay in weeks, and source documentation. Every figure traces to a named published source — audit report, parliamentary statement, or official business case. No figure appears without a citation.

The dashboard is not affiliated with any government body. CPD stands for Continued Prolonged Delays. Any similarity to the name or acronym of any existing organisation is purely coincidental and is not intended as a reflection on, or reference to, any such body.

The full register is at quintinqs.com/cpd-continued-prolonged-delays.

Why We Added ETI and Stranded Value

Standard infrastructure appraisal in the UK and Ireland uses Benefit-Cost Ratio (BCR), calculated under HM Treasury Green Book / WebTAG methodology. BCR is a useful tool. It is not a sufficient one.

O’Neill’s critique — which he has made consistently since his Northern Powerhouse work under the Coalition and Conservative governments — is that BCR systematically undervalues transformative regional infrastructure. It captures direct user benefits well. It captures agglomeration, labour market liberation, suppressed demand, and network effects poorly. A scheme connecting a high-education, low-wage peninsula to a city labour market will produce a BCR that looks modest. The economic transformation it delivers will be substantially larger.

The second gap in standard appraisal is one that O’Neill did not specifically name but which his OBR analogy implies directly: delivery certainty is invisible in BCR. A scheme with a BCR of 3.0 that is paused indefinitely has an actual economic contribution of zero. Current appraisal methodology scores it identically to a scheme that is on track. That is not a minor limitation. It is a structural blindspot.

The ETI was built to address both gaps, in a disclosed, reproducible format that any government body could replicate or challenge.

What the ETI Is

ETI (0–10) = BCR (35%) + Deprivation/Connectivity (25%) + Network Effect (20%) + Scale vs GDP (10%) + Delivery Certainty (10%)

Each component is scored 0–1 before weighting.

BCR (35%): Where a published BCR exists in a named government or audit document, it is used directly. Where none exists, a published category benchmark is applied — flagged explicitly in every scheme record. Sources include DfT WebTAG, IPPR, NAO, Environment Agency, and HM Treasury Green Book infrastructure supplementary guidance.

Deprivation/Connectivity (25%): A place-based uplift consistent with the 2022/2025 HM Treasury Green Book update, which explicitly requires place-based analysis for infrastructure in lower-income areas on the grounds that BCRs systematically undervalue such schemes.

Network Effect (20%): Does this scheme unlock or substantially amplify adjacent schemes? The A5 WTC is a critical enabler for Magee University expansion — stated explicitly in the Magee Taskforce reports. Grand Central Station is a critical enabler for the Weavers Cross regeneration masterplan. These relationships are based on stated dependencies in official documents, not assumption.

Scale vs GDP (10%): A scheme representing 3% of regional GVA has greater transformation potential than one representing 0.1%. This component captures that difference.

Delivery Certainty (10%): This is the novel element. Completed schemes score 1.0. On Track scores 0.8. Significant Delay scores 0.3. Paused scores 0.15. Cancelled scores 0.0. The ETI penalises non-delivery — something no current appraisal framework does.

Stranded Value is calculated as: (Theoretical ETI − Actual ETI) / 10 × Scheme Cost. Theoretical ETI is the score the scheme would achieve if delivered on time. The gap between theoretical and actual, expressed as a proportion of scheme cost, is the monetary value of economic potential that is being destroyed by delay.

ETI is a CPD-derived analytical indicator. It is not a government appraisal and does not replace a full business case. Methodology v1.0 is published in full on the dashboard.

What the Register Reveals

Across 280 schemes and seven jurisdictions, the total stranded value is approximately £43 billion.

Jurisdiction	Stranded Value
Northern Ireland	£915m
Republic of Ireland	€1.16bn
Scotland	£1.93bn
Wales	£1.38bn
London	£9.78bn
England	£16.29bn
Australia	A$11.67bn

Three findings deserve particular attention for an incoming UK government.

HS2 Phase 2b (England) — ETI 7.0, stranded value £3.2bn. This scheme was not paused. It was cancelled. A scheme scoring 7.0 on the ETI — which places it in the green band, meaning transformative economic potential — has been written off. The stranded value is not a cost overrun figure. It is the economic benefit that will not now be realised. Northern Powerhouse Rail (ETI 6.2) adds a further £2.34bn stranded. Combined: over £5.5bn in stranded value from two cancellations in the North of England alone.

Crossrail 2 (London) — ETI 8.3, stranded value £2.29bn. The highest ETI score in the entire 280-scheme register. Currently paused. The Chelsea–Hackney Line scores 8.3 because it combines a very high BCR category, critical network effect (it would be the enabling spine for multiple regeneration corridors in east and north London), and a significant scale relative to the London GVA base. It is not cancelled — but paused indefinitely is functionally equivalent for the communities it would serve.

ScotWind Grid Connection Programme (Scotland) — ETI 7.2, stranded value £875m. Scotland’s offshore wind generation capacity is expanding. The grid connection programme required to transmit that energy is in significant delay. This is not an abstract infrastructure failure — it is a direct constraint on the energy transition.

In Northern Ireland, the picture is more granular but no less serious. £915m in stranded value across 40 schemes. The top three — LWWP (£168m), NI Water Drainage (£166m), and the A5 Western Transport Corridor (£147m) — represent water infrastructure the region cannot function without and a road scheme that has been through two public inquiries and still has not broken ground.

Strangford — A Case Study in What BCR Cannot See

The Strangford Lough Crossing currently scores ETI 5.2 — amber band, Not Started, £18m stranded value. That score uses the bridge/crossing category benchmark BCR (2.00) because no published BCR exists for this scheme.

But consider the underlying economics. Ards and North Down ranks 3rd of 11 Northern Ireland council areas for tertiary educational attainment (44.8% hold a degree-level qualification, against a NI average of 39.7%). It ranks 11th of 11 for median wages (£450.10/week, 15% below the NI average of £528.90). Workplace wages are lower than resident wages — meaning the working population commutes out for higher-paid work, then returns. The ferry operates at 34% capacity and has recorded zero traffic growth since 1975. The comparable Cleddau Bridge in Wales saw 20-fold traffic growth between year one and year 49.

This is suppressed demand made visible. A highly educated population trapped 15 miles from Belfast by a 50-year-old ferry subsidy. O’Neill’s critique of BCR applies precisely here: standard appraisal will not capture the agglomeration benefit, the labour market liberation, or the suppressed demand that a fixed crossing would release. A full WebTAG appraisal including wider economic impacts would almost certainly move the ETI — and the BCR — substantially upward.

The ask is not a bridge. The ask is a full independent feasibility study, published, with a BCR. Commission it through the Shared Island Fund. Co-fund it 50/50 with the Irish Government. Publish the result. Let the numbers make the case.

Four Things That Should Reach PM Burnham on Entering No. 10

These are not aspirations. They are actionable policy decisions that could be taken in the first hundred days.

1. Commission NISTA on a statutory footing. (For NISTA website, click on image above)
A National Infrastructure and Spatial Transformation Agency — independent, statutory, modelled on the OBR. Mandate: score all schemes above £100m against a published methodology. Publish results regardless of ministerial preference. The ETI demonstrates that a reproducible scoring methodology already exists and can be applied at scale. The question is not whether this is technically feasible. It is whether there is political will to remove infrastructure appraisal from the grip of departmental budget cycles.

2. Mandate BCR publication for all schemes above £100m.
Every scheme above £100m should be required to publish a Benefit-Cost Ratio, a delivery timeline, and an annual variance report, to a standardised template. Currently this is voluntary and inconsistently applied. The result is that schemes like the Strangford Crossing — which may be highly transformative — cannot be properly ranked against schemes that have gone through full WebTAG appraisal. Mandatory disclosure levels the appraisal field.

3. Publish a quarterly Stranded Value account.
The OBR publishes fiscal risk. An infrastructure OBR should publish delivery risk — expressed as the monetary value of economic benefit that is not being realised due to delay, pausing or cancellation. Make it a number that appears in the Budget documents. Make ministers answer for it at select committees. Delay is currently costless from an accountability perspective. It should not be.

4. Review the highest-ETI cancelled schemes before the Spending Review.
HS2 Phase 2b (ETI 7.0), Northern Powerhouse Rail (ETI 6.2), and Crossrail 2 (ETI 8.3, paused) represent over £7.5bn in stranded value from schemes that score in the green or high-amber band. The Spending Review is the right moment to ask: which of these cancellations are genuinely unaffordable, and which are simply the accumulated consequence of a political decision made without an independent economic score attached to it? The answer may be the same. But the question should be asked transparently, with the numbers on the table.

Closing

The CPD dashboard was built because the data existed but was not being presented in a way that made delay politically accountable. Audit reports, parliamentary answers, business case documents — the information is all there. It just was not in one place, scored on a common framework, with a stranded value figure attached to each scheme.

The ETI is an attempt to operationalise O’Neill’s challenge at project level. It is imperfect — it uses category benchmarks where published BCRs are unavailable, and it makes explicit judgements about network effects and deprivation uplift that a government body could reasonably challenge. We welcome that challenge. The methodology is published. The sources are named. The scores are reproducible.

What is not imperfect is the aggregate picture. Forty-three billion pounds in stranded value across seven jurisdictions. Schemes that score highly on every economic metric, delayed for years by funding cycles, planning processes, and political timidity. The Burnham government inherits this register. The question it now faces is whether it will continue to manage infrastructure as a budget line, or begin to account for it as an economic asset — one that is currently losing value at approximately £43bn and counting.

Kevin Barry MRICS | QuintinQS | June 2026

CPD Dashboard: quintinqs.com/cpd-continued-prolonged-delays

Jim O’Neill Sky News interview: @SamCoatesSky

Disclaimer: CPD stands for Continued Prolonged Delays — a general acronym chosen to highlight the core issues of cost overrun and delayed delivery in public infrastructure. Any similarity to the name or acronym of any existing organisation is purely coincidental and is not intended as a reflection on, or reference to, any such body. ETI is a CPD-derived analytical indicator — not an official government appraisal. All BCR figures are traceable to named published source documents. Methodology version 1.0.