Recommendation 16

The Treasury publishes data on the number of active PFI contracts, which includes information on: the capital value of assets; when contracts are due to expire; and the remaining unitary charges.32 As of 31 March 2024, there were 665 PFI contracts with a capital value of £50 billion – 79% of the value relating to social infrastructure and the remaining 21% to economic infrastructure.33 The NAO has previously reported that there was a lack of systems to collect comparable data for similar projects using different procurement routes, and the previous Public Accounts Committee also highlighted that there was a lack of data available to assess the actual efficiency of PFI projects.34 In June 2018, the then Committee recommended that the Treasury and IPA publish data on the benefits of PFI and set out an approach to evaluating the value for money of operational PFI projects.35 Doing so would allow for lessons learned from the evaluation to be applied to other projects, including on construction or delivery, future expiries, and contract management.36