Its £50m contract in Bradford, announced on Monday, came after the award last Wednesday of a £200m 20-year contract to the BBH consortium, which includes Metropolitan Housing Trust. BBH will provide 50 homes a year to the NHS in west London.
Both schemes are under the new NHS Local Improvement Finance Trust formula, or LIFT. This is a way to secure private investment in public buildings that supporters say could deliver results without the complexity of the private finance initiative.
B&N chief executive Martin Kelly said: "It's always difficult working with a new procurement model, but this deal was less than a year in the making. Our Leeds PFI scheme took three years."
B&N beat off nine other bidders to win the contract, including contractor Jarvis.
The association will replace ageing NHS buildings with more suitable modern facilities over a 25-year period. It will create six GP practices – in Haworth, Low Moor and Manningham in Bradford – for an investment of £12m. It will also allow room for five other GPs and will be able to offer an additional range of services such as specialist clinics, previously only available in hospitals.
It will deliver the contract through a subsidiary called B&N Care Partnerships, which will itself invest at least £3m in the scheme. Of the rest of the money, £1m will come from local primary care trusts, £1m from central government and the rest from the private sector.
The association, which now manages 18,000 homes with the recent addition of Leeds Federated Housing Association, has increasingly sought to diversify itself in recent years to be a "community services provider".
Kelly said: "It isn't enough to be a housing association any more. You need to look wider."
B&N is also one of three bidders shortlisted for a £90m NHS LIFT project in Tees Valley and south Durham.
Source
Housing Today
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