Liverpool Central Station chosen for Green Book pilot
Making good on her promise to reform the way government appraises projects, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced a round of trials for a revised, place-based assessment system.
Liverpool, Birmingham, Plymouth, and Port Talbot were selected to test the new system, Reeves told the audience at the Regional Investment Summit on Tuesday.
The revised evaluation method will seek to prevent benefit-cost ratios, which tend to favour projects in London over the regions, from dominating project appraisals.
Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram has been one of the champions for Green Book reform for years. He was at the summit yesterday when Reeves made her announcement. He spoke to Place North West about what it meant for Liverpool’s Central Station to be one of the projects selected to trial the new system. Planning consent is estimated in 2026 and a contractor is expected to be confirmed next year also.
“It’s dynamite for us,” he said.
The 86-acre Central Station proposal is part of a vision for a new Liverpool-Manchester Railway, with Liverpool City Region looking at reimagining the area around Liverpool Lime Street and Liverpool Central. Liverpool City Region’s Investment Guide 2025 describes a £5bn gross development value project with an ask of £2.5bn in transport funding from UK government.
“What we’re doing, it’s a bit like Kings Cross St Pancras,” Rotheram told Place.
As part of the government’s Green Book reform trials, multiple government departments would be able to look at the project to assess its value, Rotheram explained. In the case of Central Station, this means evaluating it not only on the benefits it will offer for transport in the region, but also for the retail and hospitality opportunities it could create.
Rotheram added: “This is not about money. This is about the approach to the money.
“It’s not just about ‘if you give us a billion pounds we can do it’. It’s about providing developers and people who read your publication with the confidence that the government has assessed this as more than just a transport scheme and the whole thing makes sense.”
He added that the combined authority was “ready to press go” on Central Station.
“We’re desperate for the green light,” he said.
The Green Book reforms announced by Reeves build upon a system Homes England put into place two years ago, according to CBRE executive director Iain Jenkinson.
Jenkinson called Reeves’ announcement “very welcome” but also “long overdue”.
He told Place that CBRE had been working alongside Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Homes England on crafting new rules for project appraisals for years. This included conversations with the Treasury and Number 10. The resulting methodology was then used to justify public sector investment in Greater Manchester.
Jenkinson likened the new system to a “pebble in a pond”.
“If a project is dropped in, you can claim the benefits across a wider area,” he explained.
However, he stressed that a new system will not suddenly mean investment floods into regional towns.
“You can’t get away from latent market fundamentals,” Jenkinson said.
“What [the new system] proved in Greater Manchester is those areas that are naturally close to city centre perform better because the value fundamentals of that particular project are better,” he explained.
“If you go further out into the towns – there was huge improvements, but not sufficient improvements to really change the dial. That’s still going to be the challenge even with the new Green Book.”
