The Private Finance Initiative
Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) of which the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is the most common, is a government initiative which allows the private sector to design, finance, build, own and operate public buildings and lease them back to the public sector, typically for 25 years.
The government continues to promote the use of private finance to commission more public building schemes on the basis that they offer more value for money. Yet, PFI schemes are protracted, costly, inflexible and very expensive. It costs more for private companies to raise money than it would for the government or public sector. The only way private companies will make their money back is to cut either services or staffing costs. This means public service workers and users pay the real costs.
For more information:
UNISON PFI and PPP pagesUNISON Response to Lord's Inquiry on PFI
UNISON's submission to the House of Lord's Inquiry into PFI highlights our concerns around the methodology of PFI, risk transfer, high costs, value for money and workforce issues.
http://www.unison.org.uk/file/B4785.pdf(30 June 2009) Reclaiming the Initiative - putting the public back into PFI
http://www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/18461.pdf
CONTACT DETAILS
• The UNISON contact for the Positively Public campaign is Margie Jaffe.
Positively Public
1 Mabledon Place
London WC1H 9AJ
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Recent documents
The role of private finance in public investment
The report shows that PFI is not value for money, despite the coalition government backing this form of investment. It warns that the cost of PFI has risen astronomically following the financial crisis and the gap between the rate at which the government and the private sector can borrow has widened dramatically.
The role of private finance in public investment
UNISON Response to Lord's Inquiry on PFI
UNISON's submission to the House of Lord's Inquiry into PFI highlights our concerns around the methodology of PFI, risk transfer, high costs, value for money and workforce issues.
UNISON Response to the Select Committee on Economic Affairs - House of Lords
Reclaiming the Initiative - putting the public back into PFI
The report catalogues how ever-growing billions of public money has become locked into financing massively expensive PFI schemes. The Government has committed taxpayers, for a generation to come, to a bill of more than £217bn worth of repayments between now and 2033/34 on just £64bn of PFI projects. PFI’s reliance on the private sector was supposed to give public building programmes more rigour and strength but, as the union’s latest report - “Putting the Public Back into PFI” – shows, in reality it has exposed them to greater hazards and weaknesses. Public projects have been tainted by private failure
Acrobat PDF version
Transforming Community Services
This factsheet outlines the process for implementing the Transforming Community Services programme for primary care trusts.
Transforming community services factsheet
