There have been multiple reports on Private Finance Initiatives and Public Private Partnerships. These include:

1. The 2025 Public Accounts Committee (PAC) Inquiry

The most current and relevant inquiry is the "Government’s Use of Private Finance for Infrastructure" (May 2025). This inquiry followed a critical National Audit Office (NAO) report and focused on several key issues:

• The £136 Billion Liability: Examining the massive remaining cost to taxpayers for the 665 existing PFI contracts, which will continue until the 2050s.

  
  

• The "Expiry Crisis": Half of all active PFI contracts are set to expire within the next decade. The inquiry looked at whether public bodies (like hospitals and schools) are actually prepared to take back management of these buildings.

  
  

• Value for Money: Re-evaluating whether private finance still makes sense given that private debt is consistently more expensive than government borrowing.

  
  

2. The 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy (June 2025)

Following these investigations, the government published a new strategy that effectively "drew a line" under the past:

• PFI and PF2 are officially dead: The government confirmed it will not reintroduce the old PFI or PF2 models, which were criticized for being inflexible and expensive.

• Targeted PPPs: Instead, the government is testing new PPP models for very specific areas:

  • Health: Neighbourhood health centres.

  • Environment: Decarbonising public buildings.

  • Transport: The redevelopment of Euston Station (HS2).

3. Historical Inquiries (The Context)

If you are looking for why PPPs became so controversial, two older inquiries are the foundation:

• The 2011/2018 Treasury Inquiries: These concluded that PFI "did not provide taxpayers with good value for money." This led to the 2018 decision to scrap PFI for all new projects.

• The White-Fraiser report. A significant independent report commissioned by the UK government’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) and published in July 2023. It is named after its two authors, Barry White and Andrew Fraiser, who are industry veterans with over 50 years of experience in the PFI sector.

Why was the White-Fraiser report commissioned?

The report was a response to a "breakdown in trust" between the public and private sectors. By 2023, many of the 700+ active PFI (Private Finance Initiative) contracts in the UK were becoming increasingly adversarial. The government needed an independent look at why relationships had turned toxic and how to fix them before hundreds of contracts reached their "handback" (expiry) date.

Key Findings

The report found that while many projects were functioning well, there were "pockets of poor behaviour" that were damaging the system:

• Adversarial Relationships: In some sectors—Healthcare (NHS) specifically—relationships had become highly litigious and aggressive.

  
  

• The "Reset" Need: Many contracts were stuck in a cycle of disputes over small technicalities rather than focusing on building maintenance and service delivery.

• "Financial" vs. "Industrial" Mindsets: The authors distinguished between private companies that acted as "financial vehicles" (only caring about the bottom line) and those with an "industrial" mindset (caring about the long-term quality of the asset).

  
  

• Self-Reporting Failures: The report found that the "self-reporting" mechanism—where the private company tells the government if they’ve made a mistake—wasn't working because the public sector didn't have the resources to verify those reports.

  
  

The Recommendations

The White-Fraiser report didn't just point fingers; it suggested a "Project Reset":

1. The "Nolan Principles": It recommended that both public and private staff should be held to the Seven Principles of Public Life (honesty, integrity, etc.).

   
   

2. Amnesty for Improvements: It suggested a "Reset" approach where parties could agree to a "period of relief" from financial penalties if they worked together to fix historical maintenance issues.

   
   

3. Better Resourcing: It urged the government to give local authorities and NHS trusts more money and expert staff to manage these complex contracts properly.

   
   

Why does it matter now?

Since the report's publication, its recommendations have become the "gold standard" for how the government handles PFI disputes. If you hear about a "PFI Healthcheck" or a "Collaborative Reset" today, it is almost certainly a result of the White-Fraiser findings.