Concerns raised over new PFI hospitals
Tuesday, 27 Feb 2007 11:42
Plans for seven new hospitals are being drawn up
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Concerns have been raised by the UK's largest union at the potential costs of controversial new private finance initiative (PFI) hospitals which have been given the go-ahead today.
The health secretary Patricia Hewitt said this morning that seven new PFI hospitals worth around £1.5 billion have passed government checks on affordability and value for money.
Business cases for the new buildings will now be developed by the NHS in the seven areas for treasury and ministerial approval before construction work can begin.
Under PFI a private company builds the hospital and then receives 'rent' payments from the NHS each year for approximately 30 years. The payments include the costs of providing maintenance over the lifetime of the contract.
In the NHS plan of July 2000 the government pledged a vast hospital building programme and much of this has been achieved through PFI.
Today's announced PFI hospitals will be built at the NHS trusts of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells; Bristol North and South Gloucester; Tees and North East Yorkshire; Peterborough; North Middlesex University Hospital; Mid Yorkshire; and Mid Essex.
Included in the new hospitals will be single sex wards. A 512-bed hospital with an accident and emergency department at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells will have single en-suite rooms.
"Finding a way forward for each of these seven new hospital schemes is great news for patients in all of these areas," Ms Hewitt said today. "These facilities are replacing inadequate and outdated hospitals across the country."
Unison, the UK's largest union, welcomed the new building programme but expressed concerns that costs have spiralled under the PFI scheme.
It claims that the government will pay £135 billion for just £42 billion worth of capital assets built under PFI and that the scheme is linked to "massive deficits" in some hospitals.
"What a shame the government has turned to PFI to build these much needed new hospitals," said Karen Jennings, Unison head of health.
"They should have learnt the lesson and built them using cheaper public sector borrowing. Instead taxpayers will be paying over the odds for years to come to cover the inflated costs."
Along with the announced new PFI hospitals, the Department of Health also released a map showing the location of 116 new hospitals and 188 new primary care facilities built since Labour came to power in 1997.