Rethinking value for money: what do the Magenta Book updates mean in practice?
The 2026 update to the UK Government’s Magenta Book signals a meaningful shift in how value for money (VfM) is understood, assessed, and used in practice. Rather than treating VfM as a narrow technical exercise focused primarily on cost efficiency, the guidance increasingly positions it as an ongoing, evidence-informed judgement about how public resources create value in complex, real-world systems. This shift reflects a growing recognition that traditional evaluation approaches—while still important—are often insufficient on their own when dealing with long-term, uncertain, and socially complex interventions. As policy environments become more interconnected and outcomes more difficult to quantify, VfM is...
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