Treasury review will further delay Chelsea Barracks
14:20 28 Apr 2004
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The long overdue £150m Chelsea Barracks PFI project is facing yet more delays, following the Treasury's decision to review the findings of the Ministry of Defence's (MoD) Investment Approvals Board, which is due to report next week.
The Approvals Board has reviewed the feasibility of the project, following the withdrawal of the Amec/Berkeley Homes Consortium in September last year (CJ 10 September 2003).
The consortium's decision to pull out has left Regalian Properties/Bovis Lend Lease as sole bidder.
The Approvals Board must decide if continuing with one bidder represents better value than going back to the drawing board and reletting the scheme as a prime contract (CJ 31 March). The Treasury is hoping to ratify the Approvals Board's decision by the end of May.
MoD sources said they are hopeful the PFI scheme will go ahead with one bidder, because of the sheer cost of reinventing the scheme as a prime contract and because of capacity issues in the PFI market.
If the scheme gets the green light, an invitation to negotiate will be sent to Bovis in May.