How can the government rethink the approach to public services capital spending?

Institute for Government

Since 2010 the UK’s capital spending on prisons, hospitals and schools has been consistently lower than many other countries – leading to crumbling buildings, creaking IT and a lack of equipment. But the size of the budgets is only part of the problem – these budgets have also been badly spent. This will continue to hamper public service performance unless the new government takes a new approach to capital spending. So what could it do differently to achieve better outcomes? How can ministers, select committees, the Treasury, and other central government departments rethink their approach? And what steps could be taken in the next multi-year spending review? The event began with a short presentation from Thomas Pope, outlining the main findings of a recent IfG and Grant Thornton report on this topic, Capital spending in public services: Fixing how the government invests in the NHS, schools and prisons. To discuss these questions and more, we were joined by an expert panel, including: Wayne Butcher, Director at Grant Thornton UK Anita Charlesworth, Director of Research at the Health Foundation Sir Jon Coles, Group Chief Executive of United Learning and former Director General for Schools at the Department for Education Thomas Pope, Deputy Chief Economist at the Institute for Government. The panel was chaired by Gemma Tetlow, Chief Economist at the Institute for Government. We would like to thank Grant Thornton UK for kindly supporting this event.