EVERYONE INVOLVED IN SALFORD'S PFI PROJECTS
It's all really complicated but PFI projects are usually centred around building works for new schools, hospitals, housing etc. A private company or consortium will come in, pay for construction and then the Council, NHS or whoever will pay them back over decades, with help from Government `credits', and at the end of the scheme the buildings belong to the public.
In September 2009, the Treasury released some details on the payments being made to PFI projects in Salford that are currently ongoing – and they showed that in some cases we're paying almost four times the original cost.
The process is puzzling, the actual payments - for what and to who - are well hidden, but the final figures are frightening…
Ladies and Gentlemen. Sick bags at the ready? Let's go…
HOPE HOSPITAL – or SALFORD ROYAL, to give the place its new posh name…
Original Capital Cost for doing it up: £190million
Total cost over 34 years (to 2045): over £620million
SALFORD HIGH SCHOOLS (Buile Hill and Harrop Fold)
Original Capital Cost for doing them up: £38million
Total cost over 25 years (to 2034): over £151million
SALFORD SEN SCHOOLS (Irwell Park and New Croft)
Original Capital Cost for doing them up: £18million
Total cost over 25 years (to 2029): nearly £63million
Some of these repayments include cleaning, maintenance and stuff but even so they are extortionate – and the consultants working on these schemes can charge anything over £1000 a day!
Also in the pipeline is the whole Pendleton housing makeover with an original capital cost of £97million, and the Building Schools for the Future plans for Irlam and Cadishead High and Walkden High with £66million original capital costs. So tell your kids they'd better do well at these new schools 'cos they'll still be paying for it all when they grow up!
The Government likes PFI because it's `off balance sheet'; public bodies like it because the Government is largely funding it, and the private companies and consultants love it because they make an absolute financial killing on it. Trouble is that we end up paying up to four times over the odds for pleasure of PFI, running into hundreds of millions of pounds…
UNISON, the UK's largest public sector union, has already called on the Government to sort it out.
"It's time for the Government to face the fact that PFI is a fundamentally flawed system" says Dave Prentis, General Secretary of UNISON "Instead of attacking the wages of low paid public sector workers, the Government should tackle the obscene profits being made by these private companies at the public's expense."
Ladies and Gentlemen. Roll over in the mud, oink loudly and put your trotters in the air for the winners of the SNOUTS IN THE SALFORD TROUGH AWARD…
EVERYONE INVOLVED IN SALFORD'S PFI PROJECTS
Applause…
If anyone from these PFI organisations would like to make a speech please fill in the Comments box below
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