The UK faces a longstanding infrastructure investment gap. Relative underinvestment compared with OECD peers has constrained productivity, limited growth potential and placed pressure on competitiveness. For many people, this is not an abstract challenge, it is experienced daily through ageing schools, hospitals under pressure and town centres that signal decline rather than renewal.
The government's ambition on infrastructure is clear and welcome. A ten-year strategy, a larger capital spending envelope and renewed focus on long-term growth and regional opportunity all point in the right direction. But the key test now is delivery: ensuring that plans translate into projects that can be built, operated and maintained at scale, and at pace.
This report, produced in partnership with Browne Jacobson and informed by extensive engagement with investors, contractors, operators, advisors and public sector leaders, identifies what needs to change, and how.
The problem is not capital. It is confidence.
The UK does not lack investment appetite. Global institutional capital, pension funds, green finance, impact investors, is actively seeking well-structured infrastructure opportunities. Where the UK has got the framework right, particularly in economic infrastructure such as energy networks, digital connectivity and regulated utilities, investment flows.
But in social and civic infrastructure, schools, hospitals, community assets and neighbourhood regeneration, the picture is very different. Since the moratorium on new Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects in England in 2018, the UK has not developed a credible, scalable replacement model for mobilising long-term institutional investment into these sectors. Meanwhile, the rest of the world has not stood still: over 1,000 new PPPs have reached financial close globally since 2018, with countries including Canada, Australia and the United States continuing to deliver major infrastructure through reformed partnership models.
The barrier is not financing. It is whether the UK can offer investable propositions backed by stable pipelines, clear risk allocation, professional stewardship and transparent governance. Where these conditions are absent, where pipelines are stop-start, risk allocation is unrealistic and decision-making is slow, institutional investment becomes more expensive, more cautious and slower to commit.
Delivery capacity, not capital, is the binding constraint
Investors, contractors and operators are clear: they will mobilise when the UK provides structural certainty. But today's system too often operates as a collection of one-off projects rather than a coherent programme. Responsibilities are fragmented across departments and agencies. Procurement is lengthy and costly. Public sector commercial capability has eroded. And political volatility has undermined market trust.
The consequences fall hardest on social infrastructure, where schools, hospitals and community facilities have struggled to scale delivery in a consistent way. The result is a widening gap between national ambition and local delivery capacity.
This is not about returning to PFI. The lessons from earlier PPP programmes, high transaction costs, poor risk transfer, inflexible contracts, are well understood. But the answer is not to abandon partnership. It is to rebuild a delivery system that is disciplined, transparent and designed for today's expectations on safety, sustainability and public value.
Six shifts to move from ambition to execution
Our report identifies six priority areas for reform:
Create certainty and scale through a stable pipeline
Publish a credible, long-term, cross-party infrastructure pipeline and keep it stable over time. Without continuity, the market cannot invest in skills, supply chains or innovation. With it, costs fall, capacity returns and delivery becomes predictable. Sequencing and bundling projects, particularly in health, education and neighbourhood regeneration, creates the programme-level scale needed to attract institutional finance at lower cost.
Standardise the legal and commercial core
Establish a national PPP legal framework built around a mandated, repeatable core, maintained by a central centre of excellence, with controlled flexibility at the edges for genuine local and sector needs. Use the Procurement Act's flexibilities to embed early contractor involvement, pre-development agreements and staged certainty, moving decisively away from the "legal perfection before award" mindset that made PFI contracts slow, costly and fragile.
Allocate risk to those best able to manage or bear it
Replace "risk transfer at all costs" with proportionate, evidence-based allocation. Keep unpriceable risks, such as planning, policy change, and demand volatility, with the public sector. Mandate early engineering and surveys to achieve design maturity before price maturity. Use hybrid risk-sharing mechanisms with open-book transparency where uncertainty is high. The principle is simple: each stage of a project should carry risk that reflects what is known, not what is hoped for.
Make innovation and social value auditable
Shift social value from abstract procurement scoring to long-term, evidence-based outcomes, local employment, apprenticeships, community access, measurable reductions in NEET levels, specified as contractual deliverables with independent verification. Embrace modern methods of construction, digital engineering and standardised building platforms to drive productivity, cut defects and accelerate delivery across programmes.
Empower mayors and regions to deliver at scale
Move from vertical departmental control to place-based delivery. Give metro mayors multi-year funding settlements, statutory convening powers over utilities and agencies, and a single devolved assurance framework. Shift Treasury from project-by-project approval to macro-level fiscal control. Consolidate fragmented competitive funds into flexible single-pot settlements that enable strategic planning over the long-term rather than bid cycles.
Rebuilding governance and market confidence
Underpinning all of this is the need to rebuild delivery capability within the public sector, and trust across the system. A central PPP delivery body should steward templates, maintain institutional memory, oversee dispute resolution and ensure transparent, outcome-focused governance across the life of assets.
The market message is consistent: capacity and capital will return quickly once government provides structural certainty, predictable procurement programmes and a trusted delivery function. Delivery reform that is visible and credible, through early pilots, bundled programmes and a functioning central body, will unlock both the investment and the skills base needed to deliver at pace.
What comes next
The CBI and our members stand ready to work with the government to support delivery, helping to shape the pipeline, test standard approaches and support early pilots that prove what works. With clear direction and sustained commitment, the market will respond, and delivery can become faster, more predictable and more trusted.
If the UK is serious about closing its infrastructure gap and supporting sustainable growth, delivery reform cannot be optional. The recommendations in this report are intended to help the government move decisively from ambition to execution, in partnership with business, communities and investors alike.
Contact Mark Goldstone, CBI Policy Manager (Domestic), for more information.
