Request for information on the inflationary impact on PFI contracts

The request was successful.

Dear North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust,

We are writing from the Centre for Health and the Public Interest, a charitable think-tank which produces evidence-based research on the health and social care sectors. The Private Finance Initiative has often been a focus of our work (https://chpi.org.uk/papers/reports/deali...) and given the acute inflationary pressures and severely constrained NHS budgets we wanted to revisit this topic to try and quantify the impact inflation has had on PFI Costs.

We understand that the Trust has contractual arrangements with a PFI company and that the
payments under these contracts increase according to the rate of inflation, which is often the
Retail Price Index (RPI) We are interested in knowing by how much the payments by the
Trust to PFI contractors have increased as a result of inflation over the last year and the
Trust’s predictions of the likely additional increases in payments to the PFI company over the
current financial year.

To this end, we have gathered the Trust Accounts Consolidation data (https://www.england.nhs.uk/financial-acc...) for the 100 English NHS Trusts with PFI hospitals to gather a breakdown of elements of PFI spend (Unitary Charge, Interest, Service, Lifecycle etc) and supplemented this by adding the most recent information from your Trust accounts.

This leaves us with a dataset of England’s NHS Trust PFI expenses over a six year period, from 2016-17 to 2021-22, and we hope to build upon this with a request for further information.

This request firstly aims to bring our existing dataset into line with the most significant inflationary impact in 2023-24. And secondly, because not all increases in PFI costs will be inflation-linked, to try and isolate and quantify the £ figure for how rising interest rates have impacted PFI costs. Finally we ask for a summary of government support for inflationary pressures.

A model of the inflationary impact on NHS Trust PFIs is complicated by each element of the cost being linked to inflation to a different degree, and by each PFI contract being unique. Rather than try and model the impact on inflation on service cost, finance cost and/or contingent rent separately, we are requesting information on inflationary impact on the ‘total unitary charge’ from your Trust. We hope the total sum would be easier to calculate than item-by item breakdowns, and we hope that by aggregating all Trust’s data nationally we can smooth out local variations.

This request is for:

1.a) 1.a) The total payment to the PFI company (Unitary Charge) for the most recent financial year, for 2022-23.
1.b) The £ increase in Unitary Charge payments which can be attributed to inflation, when compared to the previous financial year (2021-22).

2.a) The projected Unitary Charge for the current financial year, 2023-24
2.b) The projected £ increase in Unitary Charge payments which can be attributed to inflation, when compared to the previous financial year (2022-23) .

3.The amount of financial support (if any) provided by NHS England or the Department of Health and Social care specifically to assist with meeting the additional cost of inflation rises.

4. A summary of information held on specific or local factors (other than inflation) which may have had a significant impact on PFI costs in the previous two years e.g. Major lifecycle maintenance, availability issues, disputes, service contract re-basing or other major contract milestones.

Where a Trust holds several PFI contracts, could this information be provided for each contract separately.

We are sending this same request to all NHS Trusts with a PFI contract. This research is carried out in conjunction with BBC Newsnight and we hope to assemble a dataset which is both comprehensive and accurate, and therefore of greatest value to policymakers who can help to relieve some of these financial pressures.

Finally, I appreciate the challenges that round-robin requests can throw up, so I will endeavour to answer everyone’s queries but please bear with me, and please don’t hesitate to call 0791 322 8601 as this is the quickest way to resolve any issues. I’ll also note this is a trial run with What Do They Know Pro, so I hope that won’t be problematic.

Sincerely,

Sid Ryan

FOI Requests (NSCHT), North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust

Dear Sir / Madam

 

Please accept this as acknowledgement of receipt of your request for
information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

 

We are processing your request which is due to you within 20 working days 
in accordance with the deadline stipulated by the Act.

 

Kind Regards

 

Lisa Wilkinson

Corporate Governance Manager / Assistant Trust Board Secretary

Rania Mosedale (RLY) NSCHT, North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust

4 Attachments

Dear Sid

 

Please find attached response to your FOI request

 

Kind regards,

 

Rania Mosedale

Corporate Governance Administrator

North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust

Lawton House

Bellringer Road

Trentham Lakes South

Trentham

Stoke On Trent

ST4 8HH

 

Website: [1]www.combined.nhs.uk

 

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