Jun 25, 2024
UK Needs to End ‘Build Absolutely Nothing’ Ethos, Investor Says
Bloomberg News
,![<p>HAVANT, ENGLAND - AUGUST 04: Construction vehicles at the site of Southern Water’s planned Havant Thicket Reservoir.</p>, Photographer: Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images <p>HAVANT, ENGLAND - AUGUST 04: Construction vehicles at the site of Southern Water’s planned Havant Thicket Reservoir.</p>](/polopoly_fs/1.2089105.1719305958!/fileimage/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_620/p-havant-england-august-04-construction-vehicles-at-the-site-of-southern-water-s-planned-havant-thicket-reservoir-p.jpg)
(Bloomberg) -- A major investor in UK infrastructure projects has said the country’s “not-in-my-backyard” culture is holding back productivity and regional economic growth.
Pension Insurance Corp. said the UK economy’s Banana ethos, which it described as “Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything (or ‘Anyone’)” — is preventing capital from being invested in infrastructure and regeneration projects.
The next government needs to ensure that barriers to such projects — including unwarranted objections from regulatory bodies and watchdogs — are eased, PIC said in a newsletter this week. That will help mobilize capital from the UK pension system through public-private partnerships.
The next government will need to “take a holistic view of the economy and of public sector agencies to understand which bits work well, and which bits need refining to remove blockages in the system,” Jeremy Apfel, managing director of corporate affairs at PIC said in the publication. The value created by these projects also needs to be communicated better.
PIC, which had about £47 billion ($59.6 billion) in assets at the end of 2023, is an investor in projects like the Thames Tideway sewer and Havant Thicket Reservoir, the first reservoir to be built in the UK since the 1990s. But it said too few projects are getting approved.
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