private finance initiative - research campus abandoned
WORKERS, SEPT 2005 ISSUE
The £1.1 billion PFI healthcare and research campus planned for St Mary's in Paddington, West London, has been abandoned.
Eight years after being announced and £14 million spent without a brick laid, a sod turned or a patient treated, the project has been dumped. £7.8 million went in fees to private companies, all of which will be picked up from the public purse.
The real cost of PFI is much higher. A smaller PFI project in Sidcup, South London, could end up repaying the PFI consortium over £975 million during the first 30 years of the contract — no one has yet dared to cost a 60-year contract!