It happened in South-East London; but it could also happen in Edinburgh.
The Independent reports on the healthcare trust that has effectively gone bust:
The Princess Royal hospital was one of the first hospitals to be born
from the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) – the wheeze invented by John
Major's government to refurbish Britain's dilapidated hospitals and
schools while keeping the outlay off the Treasury's current account in
return for phased repayments to private investors over a period of
several decades.
After the tender was put out in 1995 it was
awarded by Tony Blair's first government, which embraced PFI with gusto,
in 1998. The winner was a consortium trading under the name of United
Healthcare (Farnborough Hospital Ltd) consisting of Barclays Private
Equity, developer Taylor Woodrow and Innisfree, a City investment fund
with about 20 staff which has quietly become one of the country's
largest PFI players by backing projects to build 269 schools and 28
hospitals costing a total of £6.4bn.
...
In return for their initial £118m outlay and
the provision of services ranging from power to medical equipment, the
consortia will receive payments of £1.2bn over 35 years. According the
National Audit Office, the rate of return for the contractors is a
handsome 70.6 per cent.
The Edinburgh Royal Infirmary was financed with a similar deal.
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