Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is applying lessons learned from the expiry of hospital Private Finance Initiative contracts to the management of NHS Local Improvement Finance Trust contract expiries.

From 2029, the leases on 308 NHS Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT) buildings will begin to expire. The Department has initiated a national programme, Securing the Future, to manage these lease expiries through a structured, phased approach, and has determine which buildings should be retained to meet future health requirements.

Securing the Future will be led by Community Health Partnerships (CHP), a Department owned company that manages the LIFT estate. A business case is being developed to determine how best to secure the required estate after LIFT contract expiry, and this will assess the financial impact of different commercial approaches.

The Securing the Future programme will be informed by CHP’s expertise in managing Public Private Partnership assets. The business case will ensure that commercial arrangements to manage LIFT expiry are robust, and that any wider lessons from managing private finance initiatives are taken on board.

The number of NHS LIFT buildings in each region of England and the percentage of those contracts due to expire before the end of the 2029/30 financial year are as follows:

• 59 buildings in London, with 5% due to expire;
• 70 buildings in the Midlands, with 1% due to expire;
• 67 buildings in the North East. With 6% due to expire;
• 75 buildings in the North West, with 5% due to expire;
• 12 buildings in the South East, with 0% due to expire;
• 14 buildings in the South West, with 0% due to expire; and
• 11 buildings in the East of England, with 0% due to expire.