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Department for Transport: Research

Asked by Rupert LoweRestore BritainDepartment for TransportTabled Answered 23 January 2026UIN 106041

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the cost to the public purse was of feasibility studies conducted by their Department for projects that did not proceed in the last five years.

Answered by Simon Lightwood

Feasibility studies are a routine part of the Department’s approach to assessing potential transport projects, and the associated costs are managed within individual programme budgets rather than held in a single collated dataset. These studies are conducted across a wide range of programmes, and where work does not lead to a project progressing, the expenditure remains part of normal project development activity. Producing a total figure for feasibility studies undertaken over the past five years for projects that did not proceed would therefore require a disproportionate manual review of programme‑level records.

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