Will changes to the Treasury’s Green Book alter the face of housing delivery in England?

Some benefits are harder to monetise, despite their importance in particular places, according to Paul Fiddaman, chief executive of Karbon Homes and chair of the North East Housing Partnership. This applies in particular to sentiment, he says. “For example, the improvement in how a community feels about its environment, how you build a sense of pride in a community, how the physical look and feel of a community interacts with those things,” he says.

Mr Fiddaman has experiences of bidding for support for regeneration projects that scored a low BCR.

“Strategically important regional proposals and projects weren’t being brought forward,” he says. “So, you can imagine how frustrating it would be.” Similar tales abound throughout the sector.

It is important to say that the Green Book Review 2025, on which the government’s proposed changes have been based, found no “conclusive evidence that the Green Book… appraisal methodology was biased towards certain regions” (although the use of the word ‘conclusive’ and the pledge that no region will have guidance wielded against it creates something of a grey area here). It does, however, open up another important avenue of inquiry – whether it is the interpretation of the methodology, particularly the emphasis on BCR, rather than the Green Book itself, which has been questionable. More on this later.

The sector has also welcomed a new approach of assessing projects in conjunction with each other.

Sian Webster, executive director of growth and assets at Yorkshire Housing, understands this to mean that, rather than looking at simply what a specific housing project will deliver, there is the ability to consider wider benefits “across transport infrastructure or any kind of other educational [or] health benefits as well”.

This “will massively help housing sites, particularly in areas in the North where regeneration is needed”, she says.

Dr Maya Singer Hobbs, senior research fellow at thinktank IPPR, welcomes the broadening of scope to include place-based business cases. But there are potential downsides, too, she suggests. These include “a risk that adding more considerations could make the appraisal process very unwieldy”. She adds: “Decisions will still have to consider the politics and the strategic business cases.”

While these changes are expected to benefit the North, it is unlikely government investment in schemes in the capital will dry up – and transparency potentially helps everyone bidding for funding.

Grace Williams, executive member for housing and regeneration at London Councils, thinks that “a more transparent and understandable Green Book will be beneficial for all parts of the UK – including London”.

“It will shape how we make the case for future government investment in major projects, and a top priority for boroughs is to boost housebuilding in the capital and deliver the new homes our communities desperately need.”

Alex Jones, strategic research manager at L&Q, is also keen for the government to “move towards a more holistic model of assessment that gives greater consideration to the social value created through investment in projects such as large-scale social housing development”. He adds that the social housing sector has “well-established models for assessing the wider value [social housing] brings”.

Since 2019, London has received the most capital spending per person and the East Midlands and the South West have received the least.

Dan Corry, an economist and public policy expert who was head of former prime minister Gordon Brown’s Number 10 Policy Unit, spoke to Inside Housing and Social Housing. He doesn’t think the Green Book is the main cause of regional investment disparities.

He speculates: “Was it that [historically] Labour thought, ‘You don’t have to put much into the North because they always vote for us,’ and the Tories thought, ‘We don’t put money into the North because they never vote for us?’”

From working in the Treasury and with politicians, he suggests: “If there’s a bit of infrastructure that politicians want to have happen, they will make it happen, whether it’s got BCR less than one or above one.”

Nonetheless, there is clearly a central desire that the changes will make a difference. In late July, the Treasury published a letter to the accounting officers in government departments about how to implement the changes to the Green Book. A key sentiment from the letter was that “accounting officers should demonstrate that their organisations are taking a meaningfully different approach to appraisal, in line with the conclusions of the Green Book Review”. This is “particularly important” when engaging with local and regional government.

Joe Sarling, an independent economist who worked with the Northern Housing Consortium on a report analysing the Green Book, says devolution should help manage the complexities of the new place-based approach. “I think there needs to be probably a connection between the local and the national,” he states.

Bronwen Rapley, chief executive of Onward Homes and chair of Homes for the North, agrees that “devolution is a really positive step forward, because it brings decision-making closer to the people who are affected by those decisions”. That means a better understanding feeding into those place-based appraisals too, she suggests.

What are the next steps? HM Treasury says it is “working at pace to implement its various actions” and aims to publish a new simplified and shortened Green Book by the start of 2026.

“These issues [identified in the review] are concerned more with the practice of appraisal in the public sector rather than the methodology of the Green Book itself,” says the Treasury, adding that the six identified changes should “ensure ministers and other decision-makers are confident that they are receiving fair, objective and transparent advice on investments”.

So, there is hope the review will lead to better and clearer decisions. In and of themselves, however, the changes do not automatically mean a massive rebalancing of where funding will be allocated. Ultimately, as the Treasury says: “It is ministers and other decision-makers who decide what projects and programmes should be approved, not the Green Book.”

This piece was written as part of a joint internship on Social Housing and Inside Housing via the International Building Press (IBP) Summer Internship Scheme 2025.

Paid placements of at least four weeks are available at a range of employers. They are open to students or graduates of journalism or PR courses with an interest in the built environment media. For more information and to hear about next year’s programme, visit the IBP website and LinkedIn page.