No open unit-cost benchmarking observatory for UK infrastructure

HS2 Phase 1 costs ~£396m per mile against ~£46m for comparable French LGV lines; the Lower Thames Crossing consent alone cost ~£300m. Britain Remade compiled a one-off dataset of 138 transit and 104 road projects across 14 countries showing UK costs 2–8x EU peers, but it is static campaign research. NISTA's pipeline portal lists projects and values, not standardised outturn unit costs, and IPA/NISTA benchmarking is internal, not public or machine-readable.

Britain cannot fix cost disease it cannot measure. Without standardised, public unit costs, every project negotiates in the dark, cost overruns face no comparative scrutiny, and the £718bn pipeline risks repeating HS2. Open benchmarking is cheap and demonstrably shifted debate when Britain Remade did it once.

A statutory open unit-cost observatory inside NISTA: mandatory standardised cost-breakdown and outturn reporting for every public project over £100m, published as machine-readable data with international comparators, making it an official, maintained successor to Britain Remade's database.

// Build now: First artefact: maintained open unit-cost database from published/FOI-able outturns, extending Britain Remade; statutory NISTA mandate is end-state.

Britain's £718bn pipeline keeps overpaying because outturn unit costs stay unpublished; a proven, cheap benchmarking instrument exists but sits unfunded, with no dated trigger forcing action now.