Type: Infrastructure blog

Major changes for major projects: takeaways from a new select committee report

Date: 10 September 2025

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) presses the UK government to clarify how it will manage and deliver major infrastructure.

Major changes for major projects: takeaways from a new select committee report — The report adds to ongoing conversations about how the delivery of major infrastructure can be improved. Image credit: Shutterstock

The UK government has made a series of welcome changes to how it plans, delivers, and oversees major infrastructure projects.

The 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy (10YIS), published in June, sets out the government’s infrastructure priorities and spending commitments for the coming decade.>

To support its infrastructure ambitions, the government established a new delivery body, the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA). NISTA published its first infrastructure pipeline in July, outlining £530 billion of investment covering 780 projects over the next 10 years.

And the government also accepted recommendations from the Office for Value for Money (OVfM) on how it can improve budgeting and oversight on mega projects.

These are all important steps forward. But as the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) today stressed in a new report, we need more detail on how the government will manage and deliver major infrastructure.

Below are the key takeaways from the report.

Having our say

As an international charity, the ICE works for the benefit of society. And getting the right outcomes for society relies on governments making the right political decisions.

That is why we engage with the government and its various committees, such as the PAC, to help shape infrastructure policy.

We supported the PAC’s inquiry by convening a group of industry experts to input into its work.

We also submitted written evidence.

1. What projects will benefit from the changes?

Mega projects are currently defined as those that come in at more than £10 billion and are particularly complex or strategically important.

The committee welcomed the government’s willingness to implement the OVfM’s recommendations for these schemes.

These included:

Mega projects receiving funding only after passing assessment stages
Greater flexibility for budgets during the construction phase
Presenting strategy and delivery plans to Parliament at the start of a project, or when plans undergo considerable changes
Flexibility to pay specialists more to attract talent to megaproject delivery

But mega projects only make up part of the wider portfolio of major schemes.

The committee also pointed out that innovative projects like digital transformation and AI tools won’t benefit from the additional oversight provided by the OVfM’s recommendations.

As such, the PAC has requested that HM Treasury clarifies the criteria for labelling projects as ‘mega’.

The committee would also like to see an update in 12 months’ time on the effectiveness of these changes.

2. NISTA and Treasury need to be properly set up to deliver

The new body, NISTA, sits between HM Treasury and the Cabinet Office.

This structure means that the Treasury has much bigger stake in the success or failure of mega projects, where before this was left to individual government departments.

It also gives the Treasury greater oversight on the delivery of these projects by offering them a seat on project boards.

To realise the benefits of these changes, there will need to be accountability and culture change at the Treasury as it prepares to take on more responsibility for these projects.

NISTA must also ensure that the improvements it makes to project delivery and to standards and training are applied consistently across the whole of the government’s major projects portfolio.

3. Government changes risk inconsistent decision making

Coordination across government has long been a barrier to delivering its ambitions.

To address this, the new government adopted a mission-led approach with five priority areas: growth, energy, health, safety, and opportunities.

At the same time, the Treasury has acknowledged the importance of investing in local infrastructure within a single, strategic vision for each region.

Alongside these missions and visions, the arrival of NISTA and the accepted OVfM recommendations, the committee is worried that infrastructure decisions will lack coherence.

The government intends for all these elements to work together. The committee has requested more information about this, including case studies that demonstrate how this will work in practice.

4. NISTA must keep its independent voice

The committee echoed the ICE’s call for NISTA to keep the independent voice of its predecessor, the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC).

This would enable the body to proactively and effectively challenge government decisions.

Without it, the committee worries there will be a lack of scrutiny over how effectively the Treasury and NISTA are delivering the 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy.

During the inquiry, NISTA pointed to its advisory council, retained from the NIC model, as a source of this independent advice.

NISTA expects to report on its progress delivering the 10YIS on an annual basis. The committee would like to see more detail on this process, and to understand how it will be independently assessed.

The ICE’s view

The ICE has long called for better oversight and decision-making on major projects.

Our upcoming paper on improving delivery focuses on many similar themes, and this report is a welcome addition to the conversation.

The PAC rightly recognises the progress this government has made in setting up a new infrastructure delivery system in the UK.

The 10YIS and the infrastructure pipeline offer an opportunity to reflect not just on what we build, but how we build it.

To deliver on these ambitions, NISTA will need to be able to independently assess the government’s decisions.

This is a conversation that will continue. After all, advising on the government’s most expensive and complex projects requires adequate scrutiny

There is plenty we can improve, and these requests for more clarity from the PAC prove that parties across Parliament are aware of the challenges of infrastructure delivery.