Billions Committed, Billions Unspent
Northern Ireland's City and Growth Deals — the flagship economic development programme that was supposed to transform the region's infrastructure and drive long-term prosperity — are in serious trouble, according to a new report from the Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO). The report, published this week, finds that £1.2 billion of the £1.7 billion committed across the four deals covering Belfast, Derry-Londonderry, Mid South West, and Causeway Coast and Glens remains unspent, with several major projects significantly behind their original delivery schedules.
The Auditor General, Dorinnia Carville, said the findings raised "fundamental questions" about the governance and delivery capacity of the City Deal programme and called for an urgent review of project management arrangements across all four deals.
What Are the City and Growth Deals?
The City and Growth Deals are a UK government initiative that provides long-term capital investment to regional economies, matched by local government and other partners. In Northern Ireland, the four deals were agreed between 2019 and 2022 and are intended to fund a range of infrastructure, innovation, and skills projects over a 15-year period.
The Belfast Region City Deal, the largest of the four at £850 million, includes projects such as the Global Innovation Institute at Queen's University Belfast, the Advanced Manufacturing Innovation Centre at Ulster University's Belfast campus, and a major regeneration of the Weaver's Cross area around Belfast Grand Central Station. The Derry City and Strabane District Deal, worth £250 million, includes a new digital innovation hub and a major investment in the city's waterfront.
The Delivery Problem
The NIAO report identifies a range of factors contributing to the slow pace of delivery. These include: the complexity of the governance arrangements, which involve multiple public bodies, local councils, universities, and private sector partners; the impact of construction cost inflation, which has significantly increased the cost of several projects and required redesign; the legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic, which delayed planning and procurement processes; and, in some cases, what the report describes as "insufficient project management capacity" within the bodies responsible for delivery.
The report is particularly critical of the governance arrangements for the Belfast Region City Deal, noting that the programme board has met only six times in the past two years and that there is no single point of accountability for overall delivery. "The governance structure is too complex and too diffuse," the report states. "When things go wrong — and things have gone wrong — it is not always clear who is responsible for fixing them."
Political Response
The findings have prompted sharp exchanges at Stormont. Finance Minister Caoimhe Archibald said she was "deeply concerned" by the NIAO's findings and announced that her department would conduct an immediate review of the governance arrangements for all four deals. Economy Minister Conor Murphy said the slow pace of delivery was "unacceptable" and that he would be writing to all City Deal partners to demand updated delivery plans within 60 days.
Opposition parties were less measured in their response. Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie described the situation as "a scandal" and called for a full public inquiry into the management of the deals. "We have £1.2 billion sitting unspent while communities across Northern Ireland are crying out for investment," Beattie said. "This is a failure of governance on a massive scale."
What Needs to Change
The NIAO report makes 12 recommendations, including the appointment of a dedicated City Deal delivery director with cross-departmental authority, the introduction of quarterly public reporting on project progress, and a fundamental review of the governance structures for each deal. It also recommends that the UK government and the Northern Ireland Executive jointly review the overall programme to assess whether the original project mix remains appropriate given changed economic circumstances.
For the communities that were promised transformation by the City and Growth Deals, the NIAO report is a sobering reminder that political announcements and actual delivery are very different things. The money is there. The question is whether Northern Ireland's public institutions have the capacity and the will to spend it wisely and on time.
