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One of the first trusts to publish monthly spending data online has revealed it is paying around £3m each month to its private finance initiative (PFI) partner.
The online accounts for Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS trust, one of England's largest, shows that its biggest supplier was its PFI supplier Catalyst Healthcare Leeds. In October, the firm received £3.12m in payments due on the £220m Bexley Wing cancer centre at St James's, opened in 2008 to treat patients from across Yorkshire and the Humber (full data).
Similar spending information released by the trust for May to September shows it paid Catalyst between £2.96m and £3.6m in each of those months.
Use of PFI in the NHS, which expanded hugely under the last government, has become controversial as the amounts due to be repaid become clear. In August, the Department of Health said that NHS organisations will eventually pay more than £50bn for buildings worth just £11bn, with maintenance charges adding a further £15bn.
According to HM Treasury's annual list of PFI projects (link), Leeds Teaching Hospitals will not complete payments for the Bexley centre until 2041, by which time the Treasury estimates it will have paid around £1.24bn for a facility worth less than a fifth of that.*
Leeds Teaching Hospitals is one of 59 NHS trusts in England that have begun to publish monthly spending of items above £25,000 on the Data.gov.uk website. Its data showed that the second largest supplier to the trust in October was another construction firm, with £1.84m going to Laing O'Rourke as part of a £34m reconfiguration of services at its two main hospitals, under the national Procurement 21 programme.
The reconfiguration has involved centralising acute medical services at St James's and children's services at Leeds General Infirmary. The trust is currently completing a similar centralisation of older people's services at St James's.
The third largest supplier in the month was the NHS Litigation Authority (£1.58m), for the trust's subscription to its clinical negligence scheme and insurance services. (A second set of payments to the authority in October, made for technical reasons in the same month, has been removed from the table of data.)
The total amount of spending with suppliers disclosed for October by the trust was £16.27m – about a third of its £45m monthly payroll.
NHS trusts are following central and local government in publishing raw financial data online, including their spending on PFI facilities deals, research by SmartHealthcare.com has shown.
The list on Data.gov.uk also includes 22 hospital trusts, such as University College London Hospital, University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire and The Christie foundation trust in Manchester, as well as 22 primary care trusts including Buckinghamshire, Sheffield and Somerset.
A small number of other types of trusts, including some mental health organisations, the north-east's ambulance service and the strategic health authorities for London and the West Midlands, are also publishing spending data.
* Correction: we asked Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust about the £1.24bn total repayment figure, sourced from HM Treasury data, before publication. On 30 November, it told us that the figure is incorrect, partly because the deal actually ends in 2037 rather than 2041 as stated by the Treasury, and partly because an equipment concession ends in 2022, lowering annual costs from that date.
The trust adds that it expects to pay a total of £696m by 2037, at 2010-11 prices and deducting recoverable VAT, adding that this covers the maintenance of facilities and equipment as well as the building's cost.
List of suppliers to Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS trust in October 2010
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