Seven more PFI hospitals to go ahead
Seven more private finance initiative (PFI) hospitals, with a capital value of almost £1.5bn, were finally given the go-ahead yesterday but amid growing frustration among PFI providers at the time it is taking for the Department of Health to adjust hospital building plans to the new, more competitive, NHS market.
The hospital PFI programme is being cut back from an original £12bn of additional schemes to something closer to £7bn-£9bn, according to the health department, as hospitals adjust to the uncertainty of a system that pays them for each patient they treat, in contrast to block contracts.
Yesterday's announcements in part reflects that. The value of the seven schemes given the go-ahead is being reduced by about 15 per cent, or by £248m on their original £1.63bn value.
But although the go-aheads - for schemes at various stages of procurement - has now been given the first stage of the review was meant to be completed by late last year.
And a reappraisal of 23 other schemes with a capital value of about £5.5bn, including some individual projects worth £500m and more, is unlikely to be completed before the autumn, the health department said - the better part of two years since the review of PFI projects was launched.
"The delays and uncertainties are frustrating," Adrian Bull, managing director of Carillion Health, a PFI provider, said.
"It is right that there should be a review because the biggest thing that bedevils PFI projects is when there are changes to a scheme part-way through. So we want them to come to market absolutely clear about what it is they want, so that the procurement can be efficient.
"But having said that, the uncertainty and the stop-go nature of the pipeline makes it extremely difficult for organisations that have to plan to commit considerable and significant resources to these projects."
To date, only a few PFI projects - the £1bn Paddington campus scheme, Whipps Cross and Essex Rivers - have been withdrawn. Three of yesterday's approvals - Peterborough, a rebuild in North Bristol, and a smaller project in the north-east, went through unchanged.
Two more have undergone relatively minor revision. But the Maidstone deal has been cut back from a £269m scheme to £218m, while one in Mid-Essex is down from £199m to £143m.
The announcement came as health ministers stressed the scale of the National Health Service building programme since 1997, which has seen 116 new hospitals opened or approved, along with 188 primary care facilities, at a total cost of £10.6bn.
Unison, the health service union, protested that taxpayers will be "paying over the odds" for the new facilities for years to come because they have been built through the PFI.
From:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/6c27d924-c607-11db-b460-000b5df10621.html
With the announcements above, the scandal of more PFI waste in the NHS sadly continues. On 22 Jan 07 in Health Direct's blog: PFI firms make £23bn profits from NHS we posted that the private sector will make £23bn in profits and interest over the next 30 years by building NHS hospitals, campaigners have calculated.
Under the private finance initiative, a company builds a hospital and then gets "rent" from the NHS for a set term. A report by the Keep Our NHS Public claims the Labour government is carrying out "patchwork privatisation" of the NHS.
And it's all sadly to form from the chancellor- in Brother Brown can’t cure this paralysed NHS, so he plans to privatise it (16 Jan 07) we wrote about how the former Granada boss Sir Gerry Robinson recently spent six months trying to reform Rotherham general hospital. The result was shown in three hours of fly on the wall television on BBC2 last week.
It was rightly put after the watershed: as politics it was certificate 18. At the end of each day Robinson could be seen slumped in the back of his car, his face buried in his hands. A tycoon sobbing in a limousine is the perfect icon of Labour’s health service.
The hospital PFI programme is being cut back from an original £12bn of additional schemes to something closer to £7bn-£9bn, according to the health department, as hospitals adjust to the uncertainty of a system that pays them for each patient they treat, in contrast to block contracts.
Yesterday's announcements in part reflects that. The value of the seven schemes given the go-ahead is being reduced by about 15 per cent, or by £248m on their original £1.63bn value.
But although the go-aheads - for schemes at various stages of procurement - has now been given the first stage of the review was meant to be completed by late last year.
And a reappraisal of 23 other schemes with a capital value of about £5.5bn, including some individual projects worth £500m and more, is unlikely to be completed before the autumn, the health department said - the better part of two years since the review of PFI projects was launched.
"The delays and uncertainties are frustrating," Adrian Bull, managing director of Carillion Health, a PFI provider, said.
"It is right that there should be a review because the biggest thing that bedevils PFI projects is when there are changes to a scheme part-way through. So we want them to come to market absolutely clear about what it is they want, so that the procurement can be efficient.
"But having said that, the uncertainty and the stop-go nature of the pipeline makes it extremely difficult for organisations that have to plan to commit considerable and significant resources to these projects."
To date, only a few PFI projects - the £1bn Paddington campus scheme, Whipps Cross and Essex Rivers - have been withdrawn. Three of yesterday's approvals - Peterborough, a rebuild in North Bristol, and a smaller project in the north-east, went through unchanged.
Two more have undergone relatively minor revision. But the Maidstone deal has been cut back from a £269m scheme to £218m, while one in Mid-Essex is down from £199m to £143m.
The announcement came as health ministers stressed the scale of the National Health Service building programme since 1997, which has seen 116 new hospitals opened or approved, along with 188 primary care facilities, at a total cost of £10.6bn.
Unison, the health service union, protested that taxpayers will be "paying over the odds" for the new facilities for years to come because they have been built through the PFI.
From:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/6c27d924-c607-11db-b460-000b5df10621.html
With the announcements above, the scandal of more PFI waste in the NHS sadly continues. On 22 Jan 07 in Health Direct's blog: PFI firms make £23bn profits from NHS we posted that the private sector will make £23bn in profits and interest over the next 30 years by building NHS hospitals, campaigners have calculated.
Under the private finance initiative, a company builds a hospital and then gets "rent" from the NHS for a set term. A report by the Keep Our NHS Public claims the Labour government is carrying out "patchwork privatisation" of the NHS.
And it's all sadly to form from the chancellor- in Brother Brown can’t cure this paralysed NHS, so he plans to privatise it (16 Jan 07) we wrote about how the former Granada boss Sir Gerry Robinson recently spent six months trying to reform Rotherham general hospital. The result was shown in three hours of fly on the wall television on BBC2 last week.
It was rightly put after the watershed: as politics it was certificate 18. At the end of each day Robinson could be seen slumped in the back of his car, his face buried in his hands. A tycoon sobbing in a limousine is the perfect icon of Labour’s health service.
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2:37 PM
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