The government’s regeneration projects are over-ambitious and poorly thought out, according to the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

Edward Leigh said yesterday that the government was guilty of “daydreaming” over so-called prestige projects such as the Thames Gateway regeneration (pictured).

In an 18 page letter sent to MPs today, outgoing chairman Leigh spells out his overall impressions of government spending since taking on his role nine years ago.

It says: “The government set enormously ambitious goals in regenerating the Thames Gateway region.

“But bold, large scale schemes such as this cannot work without detailed planning, proper coordination of the different agencies involved and strong project management. All were absent in the Thames Gateway project.”

Leigh says such projects had an “element of the daydream” about them. He said: “Without the hard dose of reality needed to bring these things to life, it does not stack up to much.”

He also claims that billions of pounds are wasted through inefficient public sector operations, and sets out a list of lessons to be learned from his time in office:

Complexity impedes effective delivery. Public services are often complex, inflexible and inefficient. Services should be kept simple, with less means testing and more standardisation.

2. Project management must be improved. In particular, public bodies must reduce optimism bias in their planning of projects and be more honest about what can reasonably be achieved and the risks to delivery.

3. IT procurement is particularly weak. Projects are over-ambitious, overly complex and fail to deliver what is promised while costs rocket.

4. Core management skills are in short supply. Too many bureaucrats have never run anything outside the public sector.

5. Information must be used intelligently. Accurate information is needed to know what is happening and to make timely, informed decisions about how to get things back on track or, if necessary, call a halt to projects and programmes that are failing.

6. Efficiency savings must be real. Departments are always promising efficiency savings but the reality rarely lives up to the rhetoric.

7. Government purchasing power must be maximised. Though it is a hugely powerful customer it rarely gets the best deal when buying goods and services and is too often ripped off by suppliers.

8. Fraud and error must be tackled head on. Taxpayers lose faith in government when they see their hard earned cash seeping from the system.

9. Government must learn from experience. Government needs to learn from its failures and its successes, so that mistakes in one part are not repeated elsewhere.

10. Public scrutiny adds value. It must be taken seriously by senior civil servants.

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