Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of renegotiating current private finance debt to fund neighbourhood health centres with any potential savings.

Private finance initiative contracts are not held by the Department. Contracts are held between the local National Health Service trust and their respective private finance company.

The Department’s Private Finance Centre of Best Practice (CoBP) team, together with the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, provides expert support and advice to public authorities with private finance initiative contracts, to improve the performance of existing contracts and manage their expiry.

The Department focuses on supporting trusts to assess the costs and performance of their contracts, to help maximise support for frontline services and make every penny of our NHS funding count. The Department supports trusts on a case-by-case basis considering all options available whilst maintaining contractual compliance. The contracts were let for a prescribed period of time, with the terms set at the outset with limited areas for renegotiation. The CoPB team, however, continues to assess opportunities to refinance debt where possible and where it would provide value for money.

As set out in the 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy (the Strategy) and the 10-Year Health Plan, in addition to significant capital investment, the Government would explore the feasibility of using new Public Private Partnership (PPP) Neighbourhood Health Centres (NHCs).

The Budget, published on 26 November 2025, builds on the Strategy and the 10-Year Health Plan by confirming that the NHS Neighbourhood Rebuild Programme will deliver new NHCs through upgrading and repurposing existing buildings and building new facilities through a combination of public sector investment and a new model of PPPs.

To ensure the NHC PPPs are managed transparently and are fiscally sustainable, these partnerships will be budgeted for as if they are on a balance sheet.

Delivering new NHCs through a combination of public investment and PPPs will also allow, for the first time, for evidence to be built and compared between different delivery models.