Laing O'Rourke wins £120m Yorkshire Pf2 schools

Laing O’Rourke has won a £120m batch of privately-financed schools in Yorkshire, Building can reveal.

It is understood that Laing O’Rourke has beaten Bam Construction and Morgan Sindall to the batch of Pf2 schools, which is the fourth privately-financed batch to come to market through the Priority Schools Building Programme (PSBP).

The batch comprises seven schools and is worth up to £120m.

The schools in the batch are:

• All Saints Catholic College, Huddersfield
• Belle Vue Boys’ School, Bradford;
• Carlton Bolling College, Bradford
• Harrogate High School, Harrogate
• Oakbank School, Keighley
• Samuel Lister Academy, Bradford
• Whitcliffe Mount Business and Enterprise College, Huddersfield

Laing O’Rourke will design, build, finance and maintain the schools under the government’s new private finance model (Pf2), which will use an organisation to provide debt funding for all of the privately-financed schools batches, rather than each batch having to secure its own funding.

The Education Funding Agency adopted the aggregator model after it had struggled to raise long-term debt funding for its Pf2 programme.