CPD — British Isles Infrastructure Tracker

Portfolio at a glance — all 6 jurisdictions

Total Schemes Tracked

240

40 per jurisdiction

Combined Announced Cost

—

At time of announcement

Combined Current Estimate

—

Latest confirmed figures

Total Cost Overrun

—

% above announced cost

Worst CPD Score

34

England — Combined Index

Longest Single Delay

884w

Transpennine Route Upgrade

Live overrun clocks — ticking at BCIS inflation rates

Each clock shows the confirmed active cost overrun for that jurisdiction, compounding in real-time at the blended BCIS construction inflation rate for that portfolio. Clock base excludes completed and cancelled schemes. ROI denominated in €; all others in £.

CPD Index — cross-jurisdiction ranking (100 = worst, 0 = perfect)

Rank	Jurisdiction	CPD-C (Cost)	Cost Overrun	CPD-D (Delivery)	Avg Delay	Max Delay	Combined	Score Bar	Dashboard

CPD Combined = unweighted average of CPD-C and CPD-D. Higher score = worse delivery. CPD-C penalises cost overruns; CPD-D penalises delivery delays. Ranked worst to best by Combined score.

Infrastructure Vital Signs — 6 Jurisdictions as Patients

CPD Patient Monitor

BPM = CPD Combined score · Sparkline = rolling cost pressure · Status = clinical condition

Critical (75+)

Warning (60–74)

Guarded (45–59)

Stable (<45)

BPM derived from CPD Combined score · Sparkline shows live BCIS inflation pressure on undelivered portfolio

Visual comparison

CPD Combined Index — All Jurisdictions

CPD-C vs CPD-D — Cost vs Delivery Split

Average Delay by Jurisdiction (weeks)

Portfolio Status Breakdown — Schemes by Status

Cost Overrun % — Announced vs Current by Jurisdiction

Delivery performance — delay metric comparison

Jurisdiction Average weeks of delay across delayed schemes (0–900w scale)

Jurisdiction profiles — click to open full dashboard

Key findings across the British Isles

England & ROI are the worst performers

England scores CPD Combined 85 — CPD-C 88, CPD-D 82. HS2 Phase 2b cancelled; £43.6bn spent on HS2 with no passengers. Transpennine Route Upgrade: 17-year delay, +224% cost. ROI scores 86 — the highest in the tracker. National Children's Hospital +124%, MetroLink +217%, Cork-Limerick Motorway unbuilt after 23 years. Together they represent the worst delivery records in the British Isles.

Scotland is the best performer — but still failing

Scotland's Combined score of 59 is the lowest (best) in the tracker — but that is not a cause for celebration. CPD-C of 52 reflects Ferguson Marine (+374%), NHS Grampian Baird Hospital (+227%), and Edinburgh Tram Phase 1 (+107%). CPD-D of 65 is second-best, meaning schemes do get built — but rarely at anything close to the announced price. No jurisdiction is performing well.

Northern Ireland announces but doesn't build

NI's 40-scheme Combined score of 69 — CPD-C 63, CPD-D 75 — reflects a pattern of schemes paused for years before a brick is laid. A5 (2007 announcement, no metre built), Casement Park, the North–South Interconnector (2006→2031), and Strule Campus (2020→2028) together represent decades of inertia. 7 schemes currently paused.

London: world-class projects, world-class delays

Crossrail arrived 4 years late and £4.1bn over. The Piccadilly Line upgrade is a year behind before it opens. Hammersmith Bridge has been closed to traffic since 2019 with costs rising 525%. Four Lines Modernisation is 7 years overdue. A CPD-C of 22 reflects that almost nothing is delivered at the announced cost.

Wales: improving but cancellations distort the record

Wales' Combined score of 56 is actually among the better performers — but three cancelled schemes (M4 Relief Road, Swansea Tidal Lagoon, Circuit of Wales) mask underlying weakness. The Velindre Cancer Centre is 3 years late. South Wales Metro cost nearly double. The A465 took 23 years to complete.

Scotland: good delivery, terrible costs

Scotland's CPD-D of 65 is second-best in the British Isles — schemes are being built. But CPD-C of 52 reveals significant weakness: when they are built, they cost substantially more than announced. Ferguson Marine (374% overrun), NHS Grampian Baird Hospital (227%), Edinburgh Tram Phase 1 (107%) make Scotland's cost control the worst of any UK devolved nation.

Summary observation — QuintinQS, 30 April 2026

“

The data across 240 tracked schemes and 6 jurisdictions reveals one consistent finding: the further from the project and the closer to Westminster, the worse the performance.

Pattern 1 — Cost and delivery pull in opposite directions

No jurisdiction does both well. Wales has the best delivery score (CPD-D 78) but a poor cost score (CPD-C 45). Scotland has the best combined score (59) but CPD-C of 52 still represents significant cost weakness. ROI scores 86 combined — the worst in the islands — building things but always at double the price. No jurisdiction has proven it can consistently bring major infrastructure in on time and on budget.

Pattern 2 — The bigger the programme, the worse the performance

England's active overrun clock runs at £43 per second. London at £18. Northern Ireland — now tracking 40 schemes — at £10. Wales at £1.60. Scale is not producing efficiency. It is producing complexity, political interference, and systemic underestimation that compounds with every passing year.

Pattern 3 — Delay is the real cost nobody measures

The average delay across the British Isles portfolio is over 300 weeks — nearly six years per scheme. The Transpennine Route Upgrade has been delayed 17 years. The A5 in NI was announced in 2007, and not a metre has been built. The Emergency Services Network is a decade late. These are not one-off failures. They are a delivery culture that has normalised slippage as the default outcome.

Across 240 schemes and 6 jurisdictions, the British Isles has announced roughly £340 billion of infrastructure and is currently tracking towards £580 billion — a combined overrun of over £240 billion before a single additional scheme is added to the list. At current BCIS inflation rates, that gap widens by over £70 per second, every second, whether or not a shovel is in the ground.

The CPD Index was built to make that visible. The numbers speak for themselves.

— Kevin Barry, QuintinQS · 30 April 2026 · quintinqs.com/cpd-continued-prolonged-delays

Methodology

CPD Index: The CPD (Continued Prolonged Delays) Index is a composite accountability score on a 0–100 scale, where 100 indicates perfect delivery and 0 indicates total failure. It is split into two sub-indices: CPD-C (Cost Performance) — the proportion of schemes delivered at or near announced cost, with a severity penalty for overruns above 25%; and CPD-D (Delivery Performance) — the proportion of schemes free from significant delay, with a minor penalty for smaller slippages. The Combined CPD score is the unweighted average of CPD-C and CPD-D. Cancelled and completed schemes are included in the scoring.

Live clocks: Each jurisdiction clock shows the confirmed active cost overrun (excluding completed and cancelled schemes) compounding in real-time at the blended BCIS construction inflation rate for that portfolio type. The rate represents the additional cost of delay rather than new construction expenditure.

Sources: Audit Wales · Audit Scotland · NI Audit Office (NIAO) · Comptroller & Auditor General (C&AG, ROI) · National Audit Office (NAO, UK) · Infrastructure & Projects Authority (IPA) · Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) · Transport Scotland · Transport for Wales · HS2 Ltd Parliamentary Reports · TfL Annual Reports · GLA Budget Papers · BBC News · Irish Times · The Guardian · Financial Times · Institute for Government

Disclaimer: This tracker is an independent professional assessment prepared by QuintinQS. It is not affiliated with any government body. All figures are drawn from publicly available sources. Cost projections are illustrative only, based on BCIS inflation assumptions.

British IslesInfrastructure Tracker