Supplementary written evidence from Infrastructure
UK, HM Treasury
NATIONAL AUDIT
OFFICE—THE
PERFORMANCE AND
MANAGEMENT OF
HOSPITAL PFI CONTRACTS
17 JUNE 2010
1. I am writing to you following your request
for updated information arising from the above-mentioned NAO report.
This was requested at the 15 June 2011 Public Accounts Committee
hearing.
2. In paragraph 13 of the Summary of the NAO's
report it stated that nine of the contracts had no-one assigned
to contract management.
13 Some Trusts are not, however, devoting
sufficient resources to contract management. Many Trusts have
recently increased the resources they devote to the management
of their PFI contracts. These Trusts realised that managing the
contracts was a greater challenge than they had at first thought.
However, nine of the 76 PFI contracts (12%) have no one assigned
to contract management.
However in paragraph 3.6 of the main body of the
report, the NAO state that the nine contracts have less than 0.2
Full Time Equivalent ("FTE") staff managing the contract.
3.6 But some Trust teams are too small to
cover the basic list of tasks necessary to protect value for money.
We consider that the minimum requirement to run even a small PFI
contract effectively is one contract manager spending the majority
of his or her time managing the contract. Twenty-seven Trusts
(36%) have less than one full time person managing their contract.
A further nine (12%) do not have anyone spending a day a week
managing their PFI contract (Figure 12 overleaf).
I asked the NAO to clarify this and their position
remains that a resource of less than 0.2 FTE is equivalent to
"no one assigned to contract management".
3. I wrote to the Chief Executives of all of
the Trusts that previously reported less than 0.2 FTE contract
management resource to confirm the level of contract management
resource now available, and reminded them of the NAO's recommendation.
In response,
2 Trusts previously reported less than 0.2 FTE now
report 1 or more FTE contract management resource.
1 Trust previously reported less than 0.2 FTE now
reports 5.5 FTE contract management resource across their six
PFI projects.
2 Trusts previously reported less than 0.2 FTE now
report 0.25 FTE contract management resource. Both PFI projects
are hard FM only.
2 Trusts previously reported less than 0.2 FTE now
report 0.2 FTE contract management resource. Both PFI projects
are Hard FM only.
1 Trust previously reported less than 0.2 FTE is
currently reorganising its project management resource with a
view to combining their resource with a neighbouring Trust which
has existing PFIs.
1 Trust previously reported less than 0.2FTE continues
to report less than 0.2 FTE contract management resource. This
is hard and soft fm but is a small project with an annual service
payment of £2.4 million.
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