SIR – Your leader (Worcester News, February 3) concerning PFI demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the nature of the PFI contract.

A PFI contract, typically, requires the contactor to build the hospital, in this instance at a cost of £82 million, and additionally to deliver over a period of 30 years facilities management, in the form of building and engineering maintenance, catering, cleaning, portering etc.

This part of the deal is what the bulk of the payments – in what is known as the unitary charge – cover and would be incurred whichever funding method was used, for example, if these essential services were provided in-house by NHS staff.

It follows, therefore, that your assertion that another 10 hospitals could have been built with this money is very wide of the mark.

It should be recognised that PFI has delivered an up-to-date modern district general hospital on one site and in the process replaced functionally unsuitable 17th-century facilities as well as a 70- year-old ‘temporary’ military hospital.

While PFI is not perfect and valid criticisms of it can be made; it goes without saying that illinformed and exaggerated statements regarding the alleged cost escalation do not enhance any case to be made against the process.

V JONES
Worcester