Socio-Economic benefits are included, wherever they arise, as they are in all business cases.
As I understand it, what isn’t included here is wider economic benefits. Again, this is consistent with other business cases. There are 2 stages, Level 2 and Level 3, and they reflect increased economic activity triggered by the project. They are specifically not additional socio-economic benefits directly related to the project, as these are all captured as Level 1 benefits in the Business case.
Level 2 assumes improved economic activity without any changes in land use, eg that businesses start to cluster together and become more efficient because of the improved transport, or that Business has a wider pool of labour for a prospective workforce, and can therefore employ more productive people. One example of this is to connect a large number of unemployed people to a large number of jobs, which effectively helps businesses keep their wage costs down. This is exactly what happened with Ebbw Vale.
Level 3 benefits assume change of land use is proposed and delivered after the scheme is built. This is predominantly building homes and business premises on green belt (or non green belt rural land), but can also be changing industrial land to housing. These benefits tend to be higher where you can increase the amount of development, and this naturally favours high density development such as tall apartment blocks.
The effects of these benefits can be significant - doubling the BCRs or more. However if L3 WEBs (as they are known) were to be used on Tavistock, then for a fair comparison you would have to use them on all other rail projects. Given the potential for change of land use and new development anywhere close to the line of the route, I’d suggest that the WEBs wouldn’t be that big.