IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/pubmmg/v27y2007i2p127-134.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Examination of the UK Treasury's Evidence Base for Cost and Time Overrun Data in UK Value-for-Money Policy and Appraisal

Author

Listed:
  • Allyson M. Pollock
  • David Price
  • Stewart Player

Abstract

UK government procurement policy rests on Treasury claims that the private finance initiative (PFI) has reduced cost and time overruns. We review the five studies cited by the Treasury in support of this claim and find that only one purports to compare PFI with traditional procurement. The results of this single study are uninterpretable because of selection bias, small sample size (only 11 out of 451 PFI projects are included) and fundamental flaws in the analysis. There is thus no evidence to support the Treasury cost and time overrun claims of improved efficiency in PFI. We conclude that Treasury appraisal guidance, the ‘Green Book’ which compares PFI with other methods of procurement, is not evidence based but biased to favour PFI.

Suggested Citation

  • Allyson M. Pollock & David Price & Stewart Player, 2007. "An Examination of the UK Treasury's Evidence Base for Cost and Time Overrun Data in UK Value-for-Money Policy and Appraisal," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(2), pages 127-134, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:pubmmg:v:27:y:2007:i:2:p:127-134
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9302.2007.00568.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1467-9302.2007.00568.x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-9302.2007.00568.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Graeme A. Hodge, 2010. "Reviewing Public–Private Partnerships: Some Thoughts on Evaluation," Chapters, in: Graeme A. Hodge & Carsten Greve & Anthony E. Boardman (ed.), International Handbook on Public–Private Partnerships, chapter 5, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Miranda Sarmento, J. & Renneboog, L.D.R., 2014. "Public-Private Partnerships : Risk Allocation and Value for Money," Other publications TiSEM b9218010-a357-4c0a-805a-7, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    3. Samuel Carpintero & Ole Helby Petersen, 2014. "PPP projects in transport: evidence from light rail projects in Spain," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(1), pages 43-50, January.
    4. McQuaid, Ronald W. & Scherrer, Walter, 2009. "Changing reasons for public private partnerships," Working Papers in Economics 2009-2, University of Salzburg.
    5. Manisha Verma, 2016. "Role of the State in Partnerships with the Private Sector," Journal of Development Policy and Practice, , vol. 1(1), pages 53-70, January.
    6. Thuso Donald Mosabala, 2020. "Towards Explaining the Cause of PPP as a Dangerous Diversion of Meager Resources in Lesotho," International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS), vol. 4(6), pages 606-611, June.
    7. Moore, Mark A. & Boardman, Anthony E. & Vining, Aidan R., 2017. "Analyzing risk in PPP provision of utility services: A social welfare perspective," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 210-218.
    8. Zhao, Jianfeng & Greenwood, David & Thurairajah, Niraj & Liu, Henry J. & Haigh, Richard, 2022. "Value for money in transport infrastructure investment: An enhanced model for better procurement decisions," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 68-78.
    9. Martijn van den Hurk & Marlies Hueskes, 2017. "Beyond the financial logic: Realizing valuable outcomes in public–private partnerships in Flanders and Ontario," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 35(5), pages 784-808, August.
    10. Chung, Demi & Hensher, David A. & Rose, John M., 2010. "Toward the betterment of risk allocation: Investigating risk perceptions of Australian stakeholder groups to public-private-partnership tollroad projects," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 43-58.
    11. Robert Bain, 2010. "Public sector comparators for UK PFI roads: inside the black box," Transportation, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 447-471, May.
    12. Ole Helby Petersen, 2010. "Regulation of public--private partnerships: the Danish case," Public Money & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 30(3), pages 175-182, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:pubmmg:v:27:y:2007:i:2:p:127-134. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RPMM20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.