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Chris Maunder
CO-DIRECTOR | THRIVE ECONOMICS
Public Policy & Programme Evaluation Expert
I help organisations understand whether public programmes work, why they work, for whom, and whether they provide value for money.
ABOUT CHRIS
Twenty-five years in economic development and public policy
Chris holds an MBA from the University of Leeds and a BSc in Geography from the University of Hull. He is PRINCE2 qualified.
Chris Maunder is an experienced public policy evaluator and Co-Director of Thrive Economics. He specialises in understanding whether publicly funded programmes work, why they work, for whom, and whether they provide value for money.
Chris has worked in economic development and public policy for more than 25 years, including over 15 years as a consultant. Before founding Thrive Economics in 2010, he spent more than a decade working for organisations that distribute national and European funding. That experience gives him a practical understanding of how programmes are designed, governed and delivered, not just how they are evaluated.
His evaluation work spans local growth and place-based investment, business support and productivity, skills and employment, housing and regeneration, innovation, energy, transport and major public investment programmes. He has evaluated interventions ranging from a £235 million Growth Deal portfolio and a £310 million transport settlement to targeted grant schemes, and has helped Combined Authorities develop the evaluation strategies and frameworks that shape how evidence is planned, commissioned and used.
Chris undertakes both process and impact evaluation. He combines programme and management data with surveys, interviews, workshops, focus groups, case studies and economic analysis, and has particular experience of developing theories of change, testing additionality and counterfactuals, measuring economic impact and value for money, and translating complex evidence into recommendations that programme teams can act on.
EVALUATION EXPERTISE
Every evaluation Chris designs starts from four questions.
01
What works?
Impact evaluation, outcomes, additionality and counterfactuals. Chris tests whether reported outcomes can credibly be attributed to a programme rather than accepting them at face value, and builds economic impact models that make the assumptions behind the numbers explicit.
02
Why does it work, or not?
Process and implementation evaluation. Understanding programme design, governance, delivery and the customer journey, and identifying what to change while there is still time to change it. Chris has led process evaluations of programmes from targeted grant schemes to a £310 million transport settlement.
03
Is it worth it?
Value for money, economic benefits and proportionality. Chris produces Green Book-aligned benefit-cost analysis for public investment, and is candid about what a benefit-cost ratio can and cannot tell a decision-maker.
04
How do we evaluate complex places and programmes?
Local growth, business support, skills, housing, regeneration and place-based investment funds, where outcomes are shaped by many organisations, policies and wider economic conditions. Chris designs theories of change, evaluation frameworks and proportionate methods that hold up in that complexity.
SELECTED EVALUATIONS
Chris has completed more than fifty evaluations for public bodies across the UK and Ireland.
West Yorkshire Evaluation Strategy
A tiered strategy for process, impact and economic evaluation across project, programme and fund-level interventions, with practical guidance on logic models, counterfactuals and reporting
West Yorkshire Combined Authority
Productivity West Yorkshire
Evaluation of diagnostics, action planning, implementation support and capital grants, concluding the advisory strand built firm-level capability and implementation funding strengthened additionality.
West Yorkshire Combined Authority
UKSPF and REPF Programme
Interim and final evaluation of the combined 2025/26 programme, including a forecast benefit-cost ratio showing strong value for money despite compressed one-year timescales.
York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority
Employment Hubs
Impact evaluation (2021–2024) for the Investment Fund Gateway Review, assessing progression into training and employment, additionality and performance against the theory of change.
West Yorkshire Combined Authority
Local Enteprise Offices, Ireland
Independent evaluation of Ireland's 31 Local Enterprise Offices (2014–2025) for the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, assessing eight supports and over €240 million of expenditure. Chris co-developed the logic model and led the expenditure analysis.
Department of of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment (DETE)
Growth Service
A suite of evaluations including a five-year impact assessment using matched company data, showing supported firms created more jobs than the wider business base.
West Yorkshire Combined Authority
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
Where the work happens
Local growth and place-based investment
Growth Deals, UKSPF and REPF, Local Growth Fund, Investment Funds and Gateway Reviews.
Business support, enterprise and productivity
Growth hubs, grants and vouchers, start-up and scale-up support, investment readiness, digital adoption.
Skills, employment and fair work
Employment hubs, employer–education partnerships, workforce development, fair work initiatives.
Housing and regeneration
Brownfield housing funds, housing accelerators, monitoring and evaluation frameworks, Green Book appraisal.
Innovation and major capital programmes
Innovation centres, university-led R&D facilities, sector programmes.
Energy, low carbon and infrastructure
Local area energy planning, energy resilience grants, broadband and transport programmes.
Evaluation in an AI-enabled profession
AI can make evaluation faster. Chris helps make it credible, insightful and useful.
Chris uses AI in his evaluation practice and is interested in how it is changing research. Used well, it accelerates analysis and frees evaluators to spend more time on the work that matters. But speeding up research is not the same as improving judgement.
Choosing appropriate methods, understanding context, testing causal claims, engaging stakeholders, interpreting conflicting evidence and deciding what conclusions can credibly be drawn remain human responsibilities — and they matter more, not less, as routine analysis becomes easier to automate.
Plain-language answers on whether public programmes work.
SPEAKING AND MEDIA
Chris is available for conferences, webinars, panels, podcasts and expert comment in print, broadcast and online media.
50 word biography
Chris Maunder is a public policy and programme evaluation expert and Co-Director of Thrive Economics. With more than 15 years advising public-sector organisations, he specialises in evaluating local growth, place-based investment and value for money for Combined Authorities, local authorities, universities and public bodies across the UK and Ireland.
150 word biography
Chris Maunder is a public policy and programme evaluation expert and Co-Director of Thrive Economics, a Yorkshire-based economics and evaluation consultancy. He helps organisations understand whether public programmes work, why they work, for whom, and whether they provide value for money. Chris has worked in economic development and public policy for more than 25 years, including over 15 years as a consultant. His evaluation work covers local growth and place-based investment, business support and productivity, skills and employment, housing and regeneration, innovation, energy and major public investment, including the independent impact evaluation of the £235 million Leeds City Region Growth Deal and the development of West Yorkshire Combined Authority's evaluation strategy. He undertakes both process and impact evaluation, with particular expertise in theories of change, additionality and counterfactuals, economic impact and value for money. He writes and speaks about credible evaluation, place-based policy and the role of human judgement in AI-enabled research. Chris holds an MBA from the University of Leeds.
TOPICS
Does this programme actually work?
How evaluators establish whether public spending has made a difference, and why the honest answer is often "partly".
Can we really claim a programme created X jobs?
Additionality, counterfactuals and the limits of headline numbers.
Evaluating places, not just programmes
Local growth, devolution and the challenge of evaluating complex place-based investment.
What a benefit-cost ratio can and cannot tell you
Value for money in public investment decisions, and the problem with impressive-looking BCRs.
Will AI make evaluation better, or just make bad evaluation faster?
The changing role of the evaluator and where human judgement remains essential.