Dear policy maker - it’s very complicated!

Policy makers want clear advice – but what they usually get from researchers is a message that can be summed up as - “It’s complicated”!

Guy Hutton, senior economist with WSP, told the 2010 IRC symposium that for policy makers to change their focus from investment costs to costing services, they need clear and persuasive messages which are positive rather than negative.

If policy makers are to make decisions, a range of guidelines and tools are needed that can be understood by non-economists and used to compare options in an unbiased way. Policy makers need key data about disaggregated costs with information in the right context, simple interpretations,and pros and cons, including the affordability of what is being proposed.

Summing up the ‘costs’ strand in the symposium, Pipes, Pumps and Promises, Guy Hutton said that an analysis of costs leads to a greater understanding of the drivers and determinants. It had been clearly shown that focusing on investment costs was misleading, while annualising costs makes it possible to compare different technologies and levels of service.