As in the USA, CBA began with project applica-tions, reflecting the way in which the underlyingtheory itself developed, and only later came to beapplied to policy. Other areas where CBA had aninfluence on project decisions include the following.(a)The Aldburgh sea flood defence wall. The sig-nificance here was that this was the first use ofcontingent valuation results commissioned by theMinistry of Agriculture and accepted by HMTreasury. The Treasury had always shown scep-ticism towards the results of questionnaire-basedapproaches (Turner et al., 1992).(b)The conservation plan for the Norfolk Broads.The economic valuation study commissioned bythe Ministry of Agriculture notably included anassessment of non-use values which were shownto dominate the overall valuation of benefits.Aside from the controversy over contingentvaluation, there is a separate debate about the‘relevance’ of non-use values to CBA (Batemanet al., 1992; Bateman et al., 1995; Bateman andLangford, 1997).(c) A cluster of local authority issues such as localsea defence schemes.Turning to CBA and policy, although some bodiessuch as House of Lords Select Committees had forsome time been putting pressure on government toindicate the costs and benefits of European Direc-tives, the modern period of CBA in British govern-ment dates from the late 1980s with the first