Funding infrastructure and social improvement
In the Victorian era, a lot of infrastructure development was done privately. And I think there is still an appetite for that to be done today. The success of crowd-funding and crowd-lending tell me that people are willing to invest their money in unusual ways.
Each individual investor would not make much of a dent in the size of the investments that are ultimately needed, but in total, they provide half or two thirds of funding. Once that threshold had been reached, the government or large institutional investors may be more willing to make the leap. While the threshold is being reached, the investor's funds could be help in a tracker fund, or an infrastructure-based mutual fund so that it continued to experience investment fluctuation in the meantime.
Proposal
What I am proposing is a funding platform, perhaps like Hargreaves Lansdown which would allow individual investors to put their £1,000 to £15,000 on the platform and invest them in, say, a bridge over the English Channel (which wouldn't even nearly be the world's longest bridge over water), or a new M27 motorway from Dover to Portsmouth.Each individual investor would not make much of a dent in the size of the investments that are ultimately needed, but in total, they provide half or two thirds of funding. Once that threshold had been reached, the government or large institutional investors may be more willing to make the leap. While the threshold is being reached, the investor's funds could be help in a tracker fund, or an infrastructure-based mutual fund so that it continued to experience investment fluctuation in the meantime.
Social impact bonds
I also strongly believe that there are large numbers of wealthy good people who would happily invest in social impact bonds. What would be the harm of making a funding platform available to see whether there's any appetite? I would put money in there immediately.