Labour will nationalise PFI projects
In a speech at the Labour National Conference today, John McDonnell, Shadow Chancellor, announced: “It’s not just students and households with credit cards who are being ripped off. The scandal of the Private Finance Initiative, launched by John Major, has resulted in...
Queen Elizabeth Hospital Woolwich. Hospital mergers do not solve PFI problems
Merger and subsidy does NOT solve financial problems created by PFI An FOI request has unearthed serious failings at a key unit of Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich (QEH). [1] This hospital was merged with Lewisham hospital in 2013 into the Lewisham and Greenwich...
Myatts Field North Regeneration- a PFI Horror Show
Today (21 July 2017), the Guardian's Zoe Williams has published a devastating analysis of the Myatts Field North PFI Regeneration Scheme entitled The Real Cost of Regeneration. Myatts Field North is a council housing estate in Lambeth, South London, built in the 1970s...
People’s Safety Audit of PFI
How Do We Know Our Public Buildings are Safe? There are more than 800 PFI contracts across the UK, covering thousands of public buildings: these include 120 hospitals, more than 1000 schools, and homes for around 80,000 residents. These unaccountable schemes cost the...
PFI and Forest Hill School: elephants and canaries in the classroom
Teachers at Forest Hill secondary school in south east London have been on strike against budget cuts for 11 days this year. The school intends to tackle its budget deficit of £1.3m through staffing cuts. Forest Hill School is ‘the canary in the classroom’ because...
Myatts Field North, Chalcots Estate and Britain’s Failed PFI Housing Experiment
As more revelations emerge about the fire safety failures in Camden's PFI Chalcots Estate refurbishment and other housing PFI schemes, this 2011 long article by Stuart Hodkinson (University of Leeds) provides a useful background to the emergence and role of PFI...
2017 General Election – PFI needs to be on all candidates’ agendas
We need to talk about the future of PFI and we need to force our politicians to address the subject. Politicians may want to shut down any discussion about PFI with the usual mud-slinging of who’s to blame – who started it – and who ran with it the farthest, but the...
The PFI model IS responsible for the Edinburgh schools fiasco
Two complementary reports were released last week that draw significant and damning conclusions about the Private Finance Initiative (PFI or PPP) funding of public infrastructure capital projects. The reports are all the more significant in that they were produced independently of each other and are directly concerned with the risks and financial rewards related to PFI.
Edinburgh Schools Inquiry – No Whitewash Please!
In June 2016, Edinburgh City Council appointed an independent inquiry into the scandal around the Edinburgh PFI schools. Its report is due out at the end of January 2017, with a full report going to the City Council on 9 February. We will be keeping a close watch on...
The Price of PFI? – Debt, Fire Unsafe Hospitals and Collapsing Schools
The Price of PFI on BBC File on 4 features exclusive research by members of The People vs PFI exposing systemic failures in building and fire safety standards in public schools and hospitals constructed via Private Finance Initiative (PFI). Schools in Edinburgh and...