Between September 1985 and December 1986, proposals for improvements to the Dartford Crossing underwent several changes, and in 1986, a Trafalgar House consortium won a bid to build a new bridge at Dartford crossing, valued at £86 million (£ million in ). At the time there were several other privately financed projects planned or under construction in the UK, including the Second Severn Crossing. From 1981 until the establishment of the Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) in the late 1980s, private investment projects were governed by the Ryrie Rules which dictated that "any privately-financed solution must be shown to be more cost-effective than a publicly-financed alternative, and that privately-financed expenditure by nationalised industries could not be additional to public expenditure provision" budget, "which would be reduced by the amount of private finance borrowed."