3.12 While Crossrail Ltd is responsible for delivering the programme, sponsors have an important role to play to ensure that their investment delivers for passengers and taxpayers as a whole. The project development agreement sets out the relationship between sponsors and Crossrail Ltd and includes measures by which sponsors could exercise control. By June 2017, as a consequence of the high degree of autonomy provided to Crossrail Ltd, sponsors considered that the contractual remedies available would not improve the likelihood that the programme will be delivered successfully.
3.13 In 2018, as a response to cost increases and delays, at Crossrail Ltd's suggestion, sponsors increased their non-executive representation on the Crossrail board, and their project representative. They also commissioned three reviews by KPMG,2 and have taken action in response to those reviews, and the Department and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority have carried out a lessons learned exercise about the governance and delivery of the programme and other transport related programmes. The sponsors have made some changes to the project development agreement in response to the loan agreement discussed below. It is not clear what further changes sponsors plan to make to the project development agreement to ensure that they have sufficient oversight and appropriate levers to act to protect their investment.
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2 KPMG's reviews were: a finance and commercial review, to establish the extent to which Crossrail Ltd's financial modelling reflects the true state of the finances of the programme; a governance review, to assess how governance and oversight of the programme had been working, and to make recommendations for improvement; and to validate the Department's timeline of events between November 2017 and October 2018, to help the Department to learn lessons for future major programmes. The KPMG reviews can be found at: https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/crossrail-project-updates