The Quiet Gap Between Development Intent and Public Value

The question delivery cannot answer

A town can receive the building it bid for and still be left with the more important question unanswered: did the investment change the conditions that made the town unequal in the first place? The expenditure may be recorded, the asset completed and the doors opened. People may begin to use it. Each of those achievements matters. None, on its own, settles whether the intended public value was realised, for whom it was realised, how long it endured or what was displaced in producing it.

The distinction is practical. Delivery establishes that an output or capability exists. Use shows that people or organisations are engaging with it. A benefit is a measurable positive change associated with the intervention. Public value asks the further question: what difference did that change make, for whom, over what period and at whose possible expense? Evidence at one stage may strengthen the case for the next, but it should not be substituted for it.

Public programmes rarely move from intention to experience through one decisive error. Development intent must first be translated into priorities, eligibility rules, business cases, funding decisions, governance arrangements, contracts, delivery requirements and measures of success. These instruments are necessary. They are also selective. They influence which needs become legible, which proposals appear credible, what can be defended within the available time and resources, and which results become visible in the official account of performance.

The quiet gap lies within that sequence of translation. It should not be presumed whenever a programme changes. Adaptation may protect value, improve legitimacy, prevent technical failure or make continuing use possible. Nor does missing evaluation prove that value was lost. The gap becomes important when administrative conditions become interpreted reasons for action, behaviour changes in response, and the resulting choices alter the substance, distribution, durability or visibility of the value people experience.

It is quiet because no single decision need appear unreasonable. Officials may prioritise the proposal that seems most fundable. A council may alter scope to remain within a fixed envelope. An operator may concentrate on the indicators attached to an agreement. A community may stop requesting a service it no longer expects the system to provide. Each response can make sense within the conditions encountered. Yet reasonable responses can accumulate into divergence between the public purpose stated at the beginning and the value that eventually reaches people.

A sequence of conversions

The familiar language of an implementation gap is useful, but it can compress too much. A policy can be unclear before funding begins. A programme can encounter direct material constraints during delivery. A completed asset can generate activity without changing the underlying condition. A benefit can be substantial but unevenly distributed. These are different explanatory problems and should not be combined too early.

This inquiry therefore treats development administration as a sequence of conversions rather than a pipeline through which an original intention simply travels. At each conversion, an earlier proposition is made actionable in a new form. Public purpose becomes administratively legible. That account becomes a programme or project proposition. Organisational conditions shape what relevant actors can do and what appears credible, legitimate, safe or defensible. Behaviour changes in response. Delivery may enable use, use may contribute to benefit, and those benefits may or may not amount to public value once reach, durability and wider consequences are examined.

The sequence is analytical, not mechanically linear. Measures chosen for one funding round can shape which needs are recognised in the next. Delivery experience can change an operator's view of what is feasible. Communities can revise what they request after repeated encounters with limited provision. Feedback moves in both directions. The value of the sequence is that it prevents evidence at one point from being asked to settle a different question.

The Behavioural Theory of Value Realisation, or BTVR, occupies only part of this pathway. It proposes that organisational conditions influence what actors perceive as credible, legitimate, necessary, safe or feasible; those interpretations shape behavioural adaptation; and the adaptation can change the trajectory from delivery towards realised value. Behaviour is not treated as inherently irrational, resistant or malicious. The relevant question is whether people acted sensibly within one decision environment while their combined actions produced an outcome that diverged from the programme's public purpose.

BTVR is a developing practitioner-led perspective, not a universal theory of programme outcomes. It does not replace policy analysis, programme theory, governance, benefits management, evaluation or economic appraisal. Ambiguous policy, inadequate resources, weak coordination, technical execution, operator capability, ordinary demand and external shocks may explain a trajectory without any distinctive behavioural mechanism. BTVR earns explanatory value only when the condition is evidenced independently, actors demonstrably interpreted it, behaviour changed because of that interpretation, and the change materially affected the value pathway. Where a simpler explanation is sufficient, BTVR should stand aside.

Why the Levelling Up Fund offers a demanding test

The United Kingdom's Levelling Up Fund provides the primary setting. It committed substantial capital investment to local infrastructure intended to regenerate town centres, improve transport, strengthen cultural and heritage assets and reduce geographical inequality. Its delivery environment also combined competitive bidding, project-readiness expectations, fixed funding envelopes, visible outputs and constrained delivery windows.

The official process evaluation documented limited construction readiness, widespread delay and the importance of local capability, leadership, governance and adaptability. Parliamentary and audit scrutiny raised further questions about fragmented local funding and whether the monitoring arrangements could establish long-term impact. None of this supports a simple verdict that the Fund failed or that competitive funding necessarily displaced local priorities. Inflation, pandemic disruption, contractor markets, supply chains and project maturity were powerful direct influences. The more useful question is narrower: how did the administrative environment influence which account of local need became fundable, how projects changed after approval, which conditions connected completion to use, and what evidence was permitted to stand as success?

Four cases were selected because they occupy different parts of that movement. Holyhead examines pre-award fundability. Moray examines post-award adaptation. Y Muni examines the movement from capital delivery into repeated use. Space Antrim is a challenge case in which conventional administrative and commercial explanations may be sufficient. They are not four controlled replications. They form a structured comparative reading of public records at different points in the value pathway.

How the cases were judged

Each case was asked the same questions: what public value was intended; how that intention became administratively actionable; which conditions shaped the programme; whether actors interpreted those conditions as meaningful signals; what behaviour changed; what the evidence establishes about delivery, use, benefit and public value; and whether a stronger rival explanation accounts for the trajectory more convincingly.

The standard is deliberately demanding. A condition by itself is not a behavioural mechanism. A changed plan is not evidence of lost value. Attendance is not automatically inclusion, and occupancy is not automatically regeneration. Missing long-term evidence establishes uncertainty, not failure. Judgements are therefore graded rather than forced.

Four cases across the value pathway

Holyhead: when local need became fundable

Holyhead offers the clearest upstream test. The town's need was real: high deprivation, persistent town-centre vacancy, underused buildings and a weak commercial property market were all documented. The selected culture, heritage and townscape projects attracted £17 million from the Fund within a programme valued at approximately £22.5 million. The question is not whether investment was justified, but how a broad account of need became the particular portfolio the authority believed could win funding and be delivered.

The record contains an unusually direct interpretive sequence. The Fund required thematic fit, costings, consents, governance, match funding and rapid mobilisation. The council had declined to submit in the first round because it considered the timetable unrealistic. Before the second round, it assessed expressions of interest and recorded that a coherent heritage, culture and townscape proposition was more likely to appeal to government and score well than a bid framed around Anglesey's wider regeneration needs. It also concluded that only Holyhead contained enough sufficiently mature projects to make a credible submission within the timetable (Isle of Anglesey County Council, 2023).

That is a bounded BTVR sequence. Competitive conditions became signals of fundability. Those signals influenced how need was organised and which projects became actionable. The behaviour was also reasonable. An immature island-wide proposal might have secured no investment at all, while the selected portfolio addressed genuine local assets and constraints. BTVR does not require the decision to have been irrational or improper.

After award, the portfolio continued to change. Inflation, structural problems, drainage, archaeology, specialist materials, consents, match-funding difficulties and contractor availability altered what could be delivered. A third-party property programme was reduced, one refurbishment was withdrawn after structural problems emerged, and funding was redirected to another property. These direct constraints explain why adaptation became necessary. What remains uncertain is whether substitutions protected equivalent value, narrowed it or transferred it within the town.

By March 2026, four restored Newry Beach kiosks were occupied, the Empire Complex had reopened, town-centre properties had returned to use and employment was being supported. These are meaningful signals of delivery and early use. They do not yet establish net additional employment, sustained footfall, resident wellbeing, reduced deprivation or the distribution of benefit (Isle of Anglesey County Council, 2026). The temporary closure of Holyhead Port after Storm Darragh also complicates later attribution because it materially affected trading and movement through the town (Welsh Government, 2025).

Judgement: partial support for BTVR, with moderate confidence. Fundability shaped which account of need became actionable. It has not yet been shown that this produced a net loss of public value.

Moray: when listening changed the intervention

Moray moves the inquiry into delivery, where an approved programme encountered a more immediate test of legitimacy. Detailed proposals for active travel in Elgin would have changed road direction, parking and traffic movement around Moss Street and neighbouring streets. The council's own analysis anticipated displaced traffic and access consequences, making the distribution of burden visible before a final decision.

The consultation recorded 86 responses. Nine supported one option and 33 supported the other. Eighteen requested no change, while the rest included uncertainty, no stated preference or rejection of both choices. Concerns centred on displaced traffic, parking, noise, speeding and access. The result established contest, not a single community mandate. One option attracted the largest group of explicit preferences, but neither commanded majority support across all responses (Moray Council, 2025; 2026).

In March 2026, the council paused the Moss Street proposals and redirected approximately £750,000 towards surface-water infrastructure intended to help unlock the Auction Mart and former sawmill sites. The published explanation combined consultation, uncertainty surrounding the A96 bypass and the need to keep the Levelling Up programme deliverable within its funding timetable. Organisational conditions, a contested legitimacy signal and an eligible substitute therefore entered a consequential programme decision (Moray Council, 2026).

The crucial limitation is that opposition to the two traffic options did not establish public preference for drainage as the alternative use of funds. The replacement was not arbitrary: it addressed a pre-existing regeneration constraint and may support resilience, biodiversity and later development. Yet the decision changed which benefits would occur first and which groups would wait. Listening influenced behaviour, but it did not settle public value.

Transport planning and prudent delivery management remain strong rival explanations. An unfinished statutory process, bypass uncertainty, traffic-displacement risks and a fixed funding deadline may be sufficient to justify postponement. The surface-water project was still in design and approval, so neither its benefits nor the counterfactual value of the paused active-travel intervention can yet be observed.

Judgement: partial support for BTVR, with moderate confidence. Contested legitimacy and programme conditions changed what would be delivered. It has not yet been shown whether the adaptation protected public value, delayed it or transferred benefits and burdens between groups.

Y Muni: when delivery acquired an operating pathway

Y Muni asks what must happen after a capital project is completed if an improved building is to become a repeatedly used public asset. The Grade II listed cultural venue in Pontypridd had been left vacant after its previous occupier withdrew. The council's problem was not initially how to spend a capital award. It was how to retain a valued asset when direct public operation was no longer the chosen route and the building required substantial repair.

Awen Cultural Trust was selected through a community asset-transfer process before redevelopment. The council and operator treated the condition of the building, lost audiences, commercial fragility, affordability, Covid-19 uncertainty and the need for continuing local relevance as connected operating risks. Their response included staged capital work, a long-term relationship, shared staffing, flexible technical support, recurring programming, accessibility measures, public support and performance monitoring.

The building reopened in August 2024 during the National Eisteddfod, followed by a public reopening in September. Later activity moved the evidence beyond an opening event. More than 200 events, 8,496 event attendances, more than 10,500 visitors and 537 volunteer hours were reported in the first year. Between October and December 2025, the venue recorded 5,039 visitors, including 4,127 ticketed attendances. An account from a wheelchair user also linked specific accessibility features to greater independence, which is stronger evidence than assuming that installation alone created value (Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council, 2026; Awen Cultural Trust, 2026).

These are credible achievements. They show capital delivery acquiring an operating pathway and repeated use. They do not establish unique reach, net additional cultural participation, equitable access, local economic effects or long-term sustainability. Published reports do not yet provide the distributional and counterfactual evidence needed to determine who participated, who remained excluded, what activity was additional and whether benefits will endure after the present operating agreement.

The strongest explanation is deliberately mixed. Viability and legitimacy concerns influenced the operating design, but an experienced operator, an attractive restored venue, good programming and latent demand explain much of the observed activity directly. Treating all competent delivery as confirmation of BTVR would make the theory less useful.

Judgement: indeterminate to partial support for BTVR, with moderate confidence in that bounded judgement. Legitimacy-related interpretations influenced the operating pathway, while operator capability, programme quality and demand sufficiently explain much of the positive trajectory.

Space Antrim: when the rival explanation wins

Space Antrim reverses the burden. It asks whether BTVR can stand aside when a simpler explanation already accounts for the result. The flexible workspace occupied part of a previously vacant town-centre building. Its intended value extended beyond filling offices: the wider proposition was to support entrepreneurs and businesses, create a daily working population and contribute to town-centre activity.

The operating model was designed before the building opened. The council appointed Antrim Enterprise Agency, an experienced workspace and enterprise operator, while construction was under way. The agreement covered staffing, recruitment of users, prices, marketing, referrals, business support and performance. The operator contributed to design and branding, recruited staff early and built an enquiry pipeline before formal opening.

The early results fit that explanation. Offices and desks began to fill before the ceremonial launch. A previously vacant asset moved into active use, businesses occupied space, events were held and referrals and satisfaction were monitored. Specialist capability, mobilisation, market-informed pricing, a differentiated offer and ordinary demand provide a sufficient account of occupancy. No distinct legitimacy-mediated sequence is required to explain the operating result (Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council, 2023; 2026).

The wider value claim nevertheless remains open. Occupancy does not yet establish net new businesses or jobs, survival, productivity, reach among under-served entrepreneurs, additional town-centre spending or financial sustainability relative to alternatives. BTVR may later become relevant if fairness, trust, local ownership or perceived permission influence who applies, remains, collaborates or grows after price, location and service quality have been taken into account. That is a prospective test, not a finding.

Judgement: better explained elsewhere, with moderate confidence. Contract design, specialist operator capability, market positioning and demand sufficiently explain the observed mobilisation and occupancy. BTVR remains useful at the later measurement boundary, but it does not presently explain the operating result itself.

What survives comparison

The comparison does not reveal one common failure. It locates a narrower mechanism that appears in some cases, mixes with other explanations in others and should be rejected where a more direct account is sufficient. The cases also occupy different points in the pathway, so they cannot be scored as though each provided the same kind of evidence.

Four findings

First, organisational conditions can become selective signals. In Holyhead, requirements for maturity, thematic fit and rapid delivery shaped which expression of need appeared fundable. In Moray, public contest, transport uncertainty and delivery control shaped what appeared responsible to progress. Conditions did not dictate behaviour automatically, but they changed the decision environment.

Second, interpretation is the bridge to adaptation. A rule, deadline, consultation or contract is not itself a behavioural mechanism. BTVR adds something only where evidence shows how actors understood the condition and how that understanding changed action. This link is strongest in Holyhead and Moray, mixed in Y Muni and unnecessary for explaining Space Antrim's occupancy.

Third, adaptation has no fixed value direction. Pausing a project can prevent harm or defer benefit. Changing scope can protect a programme or narrow it. An operating partnership can make a building useful or concentrate value among groups easiest to serve. The fact of change cannot determine whether value converged with or diverged from public purpose. Distribution and consequence must be examined.

Fourth, visible achievement normally precedes settled public value. Approvals, expenditure, construction, opening, attendance and occupancy become observable before additional, distributed and durable effects. That timing is not merely an evaluation inconvenience. It can allow the administrative account of success to close while the public-value question remains open.

The rival explanations matter

Three rival accounts repeatedly narrowed BTVR. Direct material constraint can change delivery without perceived legitimacy doing the principal causal work. Competent administration, including clear contracts, capable operators, early mobilisation and useful monitoring, can create a credible path from capital to use. Ordinary demand can explain participation where the offer is attractive, accessible and appropriately priced.

These alternatives do not weaken the inquiry. They locate its contribution. BTVR is most useful when an organisational condition becomes an interpreted signal, the interpretation produces observable adaptation, and the adaptation materially changes the distribution, durability or substance of the value pathway. Where any link is absent, the judgement should be reduced. Where another explanation is sufficient, BTVR should lose.

What this means for public administration

The quiet gap should be treated as a matter of public administration, not merely a weakness in project delivery or evaluation. Development intent passes through decisions about eligibility, fundability, maturity, affordability, technical feasibility, public acceptability, contractual responsibility, operating capability and measurement. Each decision can be reasonable in isolation. Their cumulative effect can nevertheless change the intervention, the groups it reaches and the value it is capable of producing.

Make programme translation visible

Translation contains substantive choices. A decision record should identify the condition encountered, how it was interpreted, the alternatives considered, which intended benefits were protected or deferred, whose position changed and what evidence will later test the consequence. This record should not be buried as a technical footnote. It is part of the programme's value argument and provides institutional memory when personnel, political priorities or funding arrangements change.

Separate completion, use, benefit and public value

Stop asking one measure to prove several stages. Expenditure and construction establish delivery. Opening establishes availability. Attendance, bookings and occupancy establish forms of use. Improved access, user experience, business performance or reduced risk may demonstrate benefit. Public value requires the further judgement that benefits were sufficiently additional, distributed, durable and connected to the problem public action was intended to address.

This does not require silence until a distant impact evaluation. A programme can report that delivery is complete, use is established, selected benefits are emerging and wider public value remains unresolved. That is more informative than compressing everything into a general claim of success, and fairer than treating incomplete outcome evidence as proof of failure.

Treat indicators as organisational signals

Measures describe performance, but they also direct attention. A deadline, spend profile, milestone, attendance figure or occupancy target can become a practical definition of what matters, particularly under scrutiny and limited capacity. The relevant question is therefore not only whether an indicator is technically accurate, but what behaviour it encourages. Does it support learning? Does it privilege the people easiest to count? Does it pressure teams to select mature projects, protect visible activity or avoid reporting uncertainty?

Where the public claim reaches further than the available indicator, governance should name the evidence boundary. If a workspace claims regeneration but reports only occupancy, the occupancy data remain useful. They simply do not settle regeneration. The next evidence, its owner and the point at which the claim will be revisited should be explicit.

Govern adaptation through its distributional consequences

Adaptation is commonly assessed through cost, time and feasibility. It also changes who gains, who waits, who loses an opportunity and who carries additional risk. A useful change record should state the value expected before the decision, the condition that made adaptation necessary or attractive, the groups affected under the revised arrangement and the evidence that would show whether the programme remains connected to its wider purpose.

Public value is not protected by resisting change. It is protected by keeping the consequences of change visible and contestable. That means considering non-users and less organised groups as well as the stakeholders most able to attend consultation or influence governance.

Connect responsibility to authority, capability and accountability

Delivery partners and specialist operators can materially strengthen value realisation. Assigning a responsible organisation, however, does not establish that it has the authority, resources, capability, information or influence required to protect the intended value as circumstances change. A benefits register can name an owner while leaving practical control elsewhere.

Operational responsibility can be allocated, but public accountability for the value proposition cannot simply be passed out of the governing system. The public body should remain able to test whether the operating arrangement advances the public purpose, not merely whether the partner complied with the agreement. This is not micromanagement. It is the continuing responsibility to revisit assumptions and respond when the value pathway changes.

Make accountability capable of learning

When a programme diverges from its approved pathway, the first question should not automatically be who failed to deliver the plan. It should be what changed, what actors understood the change to mean, which options were genuinely available, why a particular adaptation followed and whether the value proposition remained credible. Individual responsibility still matters where decisions were negligent, concealed or unsupported. The inquiry should nevertheless distinguish culpable conduct from rational behaviour produced by the organisational environment.

Learning also requires uncertainty to be reportable. If teams believe only positive milestones are legitimate, weak signals and incomplete benefits will disappear from the formal account. Accountability should require explanation and correction without making honest uncertainty professionally unsafe.

A practitioner inquiry

The following sequence can be used at approval, major change, handover and post-implementation review. It is diagnostic, not a substitute for programme governance or evaluation. Its purpose is to reveal where additional evidence or action is needed and where BTVR should be rejected because another explanation is sufficient.

1. What public value was intended, for whom, over what period and at whose possible expense?
2. What does the evidence currently establish: delivery, availability, use, benefit or experienced public value?
3. How was the public purpose translated into eligibility, scope, governance, contracts, timescales and measures?
4. Which material constraints, capacity limits, technical factors or external shocks could explain the trajectory directly?
5. Which organisational condition was interpreted as a signal, by whom, and what did it make appear credible, legitimate, safe or feasible?
6. What observable behaviour changed because of that interpretation?
7. Which value was protected, narrowed, deferred or transferred, and who gained, lost, waited or remained invisible?
8. What stronger rival explanation remains, and what evidence would cause the preferred account to be revised?
9. Who has responsibility, who has practical authority and capability, and where does public accountability for the value proposition remain?
10. When will the value claim be tested again as evidence of use, benefit, distribution and durability matures?

The order matters. Beginning with behaviour would allow any change to be redescribed as a response to organisational conditions. Beginning with intended value, present evidence and credible rival accounts creates a higher threshold. The inquiry should also be repeated because a programme can be aligned at approval, constrained during procurement, reinterpreted during delivery and enabled by a strong operating arrangement after handover.

Beyond the UK: transfer the questions, not the verdict

The value of this UK inquiry beyond its immediate setting lies in the discipline of its questions, not in transferring its findings. South Africa and Botswana offer important future settings in which to test those questions, but their fiscal relations, procurement systems, political settlements, municipal capabilities, community institutions, spatial inequalities and service-access conditions differ materially. The same administrative signal may be interpreted differently, and a superficially similar programme may produce another causal pathway.

A future application should therefore begin afresh. How do development priorities become legible across national departments, municipalities, funders, delivery organisations and communities? Which institutions possess formal authority and which possess practical permission to act? How do capacity and accountability shape local choices? Do official measures reveal experienced value, or mainly confirm administrative completion? How do concepts of legitimacy and communal responsibility operate within the specific institutional setting?

The test remains meaningful only if the evidence is allowed to produce a different answer. Direct scarcity, political allocation, procurement failure, infrastructure dependency, capable local administration or community organisation may explain more than BTVR. Transfer should strengthen the challenge to the theory, not extend it by assumption.

Conclusion: governing the movement from intent to public value

The four cases support a qualified conclusion. Administrative conditions shape what actors can make legible, fund, defend, deliver, operate and measure. They become behaviourally significant when actors interpret them as signals about what is credible, legitimate, necessary, safe or feasible and adapt their decisions accordingly. That adaptation can sustain convergence between development intent and experienced public value, or contribute to divergence. It does not follow that every change is behavioural, every adaptation is harmful or every unresolved benefit represents lost value.

Holyhead shows how fundability can shape the version of local need that becomes actionable. Moray shows that translation continues after award, when public response, technical uncertainty and programme control change what will be delivered. Y Muni shows a completed asset acquiring repeated use through a deliberately designed operating pathway, while leaving additionality, reach and durability open. Space Antrim shows why a capable operator, sound commissioning and demand should be allowed to explain operating performance without forcing BTVR into the result.

The principal unresolved question is public value itself. The evidence is strongest on administrative decisions, physical delivery and emerging use. It is weaker on counterfactual outcomes, non-users, displaced activity, distribution and durable change. This is an evidence boundary, not a verdict. Attendance cannot be converted into inclusion without evidence of reach. Occupancy cannot be converted into regeneration without evidence of additionality and wider effects. A changed project cannot be described as a loss merely because it differs from its approved form.

The quiet gap is the space in which successive reasonable decisions can change what public action ultimately becomes while formal evidence continues to show progress. Governing that space requires more than delivery control. It requires decision-makers to keep the changing value proposition visible, test the behaviours encouraged by administrative conditions, strengthen rival explanations and ask whether development reached people as intended, for whom, in what way, at whose expense and for how long.

The value of BTVR will depend less on how often it can be applied than on how rigorously it can distinguish behavioural translation from other causes. Used in that way, it does not diminish the achievements of delivery or operation. It prevents those achievements from being asked to prove more than they can, while keeping open the public question that development administration must ultimately answer: not only what was built, funded or used, but what value was realised, by whom, and whether it continued to converge with the reason for acting.

Sources and further reading

• Andrews, M. (2026). Clarifying Public Policy for Stronger Public Administration in Development. ↗
• Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. (2025). Levelling Up Fund Process Evaluation: Phase 1. ↗
• National Audit Office. (2023). Levelling up funding to local government. ↗
• House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. (2024). Levelling up funding to local government. ↗
• Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. (2022). Levelling Up Fund Round 2: prospectus. ↗
• Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Department for Transport. (2022). Levelling Up Fund: monitoring and evaluation strategy. ↗
• Isle of Anglesey County Council. (2023). Holyhead: A culture and heritage driven transformation. ↗
• Isle of Anglesey County Council. (2026). UK Government funding, Holyhead: progress report. ↗
• Welsh Government. (2025). Task force for the long-term stability of Holyhead Port. ↗
• Moray Council. (2025). Traffic Regulation and Waiting Restrictions Orders to support Levelling Up Fund projects in Elgin. ↗
• Moray Council. (2026). Levelling Up programme update: Auction Mart and sawmill regeneration. ↗
• Transport Scotland. (2026). A96 Corridor Review. ↗
• Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council. (2020). Community asset transfer of the Muni Arts Centre to Awen Cultural Trust. ↗
• Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council. (2026). Y Muni report to the Strategic Culture and Arts Steering Group. ↗
• Awen Cultural Trust. (2026). Quarter 3 Performance Report 2025-26: Y Muni. ↗
• Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council. (2023). Partnership announced ahead of Antrim workspace launch. ↗
• Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council. (2026). Space Antrim Service Level Agreement: Years 1 and 2 performance and Year 3 targets. ↗
• Antrim Enterprise Agency. (2026). Annual Report 2025-2026: A year of measured impact. ↗
• Osborne, S. P., Powell, M., Cui, T. and Strokosch, K. (2022). Value creation in the public service ecosystem. ↗
• Suchman, M. C. (1995). Managing legitimacy: Strategic and institutional approaches. ↗
• Galati, G. (2026). Multilevel governance, place-based policy integration and territorial public value. ↗

About this article

This website edition is adapted from the full research manuscript, The Quiet Gap Between Development Intent and Public Value. The longer paper contains the complete analytical framework, detailed case records, evidence grading, rival-explanation tests and full reference list. BTVR remains a developing practitioner-led perspective and should be tested against further programmes, sectors and institutional settings. The full working manuscript is available from the author on request.