01 / Introduction

With annual public sector capital investment set to grow by over 15% between now and the end of the decade, the government faces a challenge in attracting supply chain capacity to deliver much-needed infrastructure. The recently published national infrastructure strategy highlights an embedded pattern of erratic capital spending as a key reason for the UK’s underperformance in infrastructure investment delivery.

In the comprehensive spending review (CSR), backed by a commitment to invest £725bn annually over 10 years, the government has emphasised the importance of long-term, investible programmes. These will be a foundation stone for the creation of new skills and innovation in the supply chain. 

The announcement of large multi-year allocations to departments including defence, health – which will see investment rise by 20% – and education, given £2.4bn a year to deliver 500 schools, shows that increased spending will be focused on a relatively small number of critical programmes. Capital maintenance is also set to benefit from a longer-term focus on the performance and resilience of the existing estate, with spending at the end of a 10-year period in 2034/25 set to reach £10bn per annum. 

These and many other programmes are tasked with delivering a step change, as they will not deliver the desired results without improvements in performance, productivity and certainty of outcome. Procurement innovation, focused on long-term strategic frameworks, holds the key to unlocking the benefits of this investment commitment. Gold Standard frameworks, codified in 2022 in David Mosey’s report Constructing the Gold Standard, set out a series of priorities by which framework performance can be optimised.

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