Battersea Power Station was an iconic listed building that had been derelict for decades primarily because poor transport connectivity made any developments commercially unviable. The solution was a two stop Underground extension to the Northern Line to Battersea, but HM Treasury would not pay the estimated £1bn cost of construction.
The Mayor of London tasked Anthony Browne with finding funding solutions, and he proposed Tax Increment Financing, which was unknown in the UK but a common infrastructure financing technique used in the US (where increases in the tax base that result from infrastructure construction are hypothecated for a period in the future to fund borrowing to pay for the cost of construction up front). HMT was initially very resistant to the proposal, and so Anthony worked with Transport for London finance department and economists to provide detailed modelling of how it could work. He started and chaired a series of detailed negotiations, which answered HMT’s concerns, and eventually lead to them approving the project.
The Northern Line Extension to Battersea was opened in 2021, as the UK’s first tax increment finance project, with limited cost to the taxpayer.