PFI cancer centre gets £220m funding

Europe’s biggest cancer treatment centre can now be built by Catalyst Healthcare after £220m of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) investment was secured.

Catalyst Healthcare, a hospital consortium comprising Bovis Lend Lease and the Bank of Scotland, has attained financial close on the new oncology unit, to be built for Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust at St James’s University Hospital in Leeds.
 
The new 12-storey facility will include 300 inpatient beds for specialist cancer treatment and a full range of diagnostic, day care and outpatient services.

Bovis Lend Lease, the company that co-founded Catalyst Healthcare in 1995, has already completed three other PFI hospitals, in Halifax, Hexham and Worcester.

As well as financing, design, construction and provision of medical equipment, Catalyst’s PFI agreement includes the estates facilities management and lifecycle maintenance of the building for 30 years. 

Construction will begin in November, completion is due in December 2007 and the centre will open to patients early in 2008.