Housing 21 seals £70m Oldham housing PFI

The saga of a £70m PFI social housing deal in Oldham has finally come to an end with the appointment of a preferred bidder.
The deal covers new build, upgrading and refurbishment work to sheltered housing accommodation at 47 locations across the borough.
Joint clients Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council and its arms-length management organisation, First Choice Homes, hope to reach financial close by the end of this year or the start of the next with housing association Housing 21, which has Bullock and Cruden on board as its contractors.
The reserve bidder is the Contour Housing Association, previously known as Portico. Gleeson is Contour's contractor, with local firm Operon handling the facilities management.
A source said that the Housing 21 group came to the fore after the group went head to head with Contour in a "revise and confirm contest - a mini-form of the best and final offer stage".
Two other organisations also priced the deal. They were the Pinnacle group with Equion, and the St Vincent group, with Balfour Beatty as its contractor.
More than 1,450 flats and bungalows figure in the scheme, which will start on site early in the New Year and will take five years to complete.
The project involves major improvements to 1,354 properties. New bathrooms and kitchens will be fitted, doors and windows replaced, and electrics rewired.
The scheme also involves the building of 99 new properties.
The Oldham deal has been dogged by problems since it came up for grabs in 2001 as a joint initiative with Rochdale council and covering around 2,000 homes.
Only two firms originally bothered to register interest in that deal after losing faith in the government's Pathfinder PFI housing initiative.
The scheme was then re-advertised two years ago after being split into two separate projects.