黑洞社区

The body in charge of delivering the government鈥檚 拢2.4bn Priority School 黑洞社区 Programme is to look to procure a financial 鈥渁ggregator鈥� to raise private capital for the schools planned under the PF2 element of the programme.

Daniel Rudley, deputy director of private finance at the Education Funding Agency (EFA), told the BFE 2013 conference in London today that his organisation would be able to say more about the plan for the aggregator, which was being worked up with the help of HSBC, 鈥渧ery soon.鈥�

Rudley said the body would raise private finance for the whole school building programme, thereby reducing potential funders鈥� risks against individual projects by allowing them to invest in a portfolio. He said: 鈥淭his is about how the programme accesses the private finance it needs. The aggregator removes the need for quite so much scrutiny of individual projects by institutional investors.鈥�

The idea, which replaces the requirement for the senior debt in traditional PFI projects, will be a major change instituted as part of the move to the government鈥檚 replacement for the PFI model, PF2. The construction value of the PF2 element of the Priority School 黑洞社区 Programme was cut from 拢2bn to 拢1.75bn in the chancellor鈥檚 December Autumn Statement.

Rudley said: 鈥淭he aggregator will sit above the individual projects and assume a certain level of health of the individual projects, and be able to be institutionally rated for investors itself.鈥�

Traditional PFI schemes required each project team to come up with its own blend of equity and debt finance to pay for the construction of the school. Rudley confirmed that PF2 schemes will still require the bidders to provide equity finance, but the aggregator would replace all of the traditional senior debt element. He said: 鈥淚n the current markets it looks difficult to fund the long term capital requirements of these individual projects. This body will have the ability to raise short term, long term and institutional finance 鈥� everything that it might need.鈥�