Third wave PFIs ready for bidding

Three delayed private-finance hospital deals, all in the third wave of the government's programme - approved back in July 1999 - and totalling more than £270m, are finally coming up for grabs.

The most advanced are in Portsmouth and Oxford where the NHS Trust clients are expected to ask consortia to prequalify for a total of £146m-worth of work later this month.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust's £125m deal, centring on St James' Hospital, is further off.

The £75m Portsmouth deal was advertised earlier this year. But the plug was pulled on the project to redevelop the city's Queen Alexandra Hospital, with the client blaming problems with trade union Unison.

The Trust has since been holding discussions with union chiefs and will press ahead with the original project and include "soft facilities management services" such as portering, catering and cleaning in the package.

But a Trust spokeswoman admitted the Trust could take ancillary staff out of the deal at a later stage to allow them to remain employed by the NHS in line with union wishes.

She told CJ: "We hope to advertise the scheme by the end of July and would hope that the hospital is fully open for patients by 2006-7."

By the middle of this month, the £71m Radcliffe proposal in Oxford should come up for grabs. A hospital source said: "We are awaiting the final go-ahead from the government to advertise it."

The scheme includes bringing together trauma and children's services on one site as well as relocating clinical school departments onto a single site.

And a spokeswoman in Leeds said that agreement was near with all local health authorities on a £125m deal to concentrate cancer services at the city-centre St James Hospital.

She said: "The next step is to present our business case to the government and the project could be advertised in the OJEC within the next 12 months."