Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to paragraph 1.25 of PFI and PF2, published by the NAO on 18 January 2018, HC 718, what plans his Department has to start recording data on the cost effectiveness of PFI deals.

My Department supports Public Finance Initiatives (PFI) Housing and Joint Service Centre projects contracted directly by local authorities. The majority of PFI projects date back to 1999-2010 and no PFIs have been set up since 2014. They were subject to extensive value for money assessments before authorities entered into them and, in 2011, the Department ran a savings exercise on projects still within their procurement stage which identified over £531 million of savings over the lifetime of remaining projects.

All PFI projects are now operational and authorities are expected to continue to seek to improve the value for money of their projects wherever possible. The Department offers advice and support directly to individual local authorities and holds network events to share best practice between local authorities on making savings on its supported Housing and Joint Service Centre PFI projects.