The inability of the senior executives of the then main actors in the nuclear industry to explain their “public value” to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee crystallised the apparent dissonance between the identified spend of the nuclear industry in West Cumbria and the advanced level research and development undertaken there, and the socio-economic conditions in the area, leading to a new formulation of that issue – which had long troubled actors in the area – as the political economy of public value.

This research has developed a conceptual framework to measure public value and use it in policy settings based upon an innovative synthesis of public value, human value, governance and institutional design theories, models, and frameworks. The research has worked with a range of organisations in public and private sectors to develop their measurable value profiles through case studies.

Building on this, the next stage is the development of a framework model based upon institutional design and analysis which can be modified as evidence from case studies in policy contexts emerges, thus revealing where a public value approach works within an organisation and with collaborators in new institutional structures engaging partners and publics.  Again, there is an opportunity is to work, with the other research themes, to develop the capacity of this model to interface with value as experienced by public in places and communities thus grounding value profiles in the value they deliver for publics as well as organisations.