The Yorkshire batch of of the Priority Schools Building Programme (PSBP) has reached financial close. The current batch involves the re-building of seven schools in the historic county. The schools will be built, maintained and financed by a consortium of Laing O’Rourke and Equitix. IUK Investments Limited (HM Treasury) will also maintain a stake in the consortium, a feature that distinguishes PF2 from earlier PFI programmes.
This is the fifth and final batch of schools to be financed under the PSBP PF2. All five batches have been financed by an innovative special purpose “Aggregator” funding vehicle, which itself is funded by Aviva, the European Investment Bank and International Public Partnerships Limited (part of the Amber Consortium). The Aggregator’s function is to combine the funding requirements of the batches and thereby provide a total of £601m across the entire programme.
Operis has been heavily involved with PSBP from the outset. We worked closely with Amber to provide audits of the Aggregator financial model at bid stage and for each batch’s financial close. We also audited the SPV financial model at each financial close. Furthermore, we acted as advisor to the winning consortium for the Midlands batch.
