Savings of more than £32 million have been found in the Highways PFI contract — by the people who helped design it.
Providing their advice to the Isle of Wight Council, Jasmine Consulting has found what the council estimate to be upwards of £32million through contract changes with Island Roads.
To date, only £3.6million has been found through negotiations led by Jasmine Consulting, but over the remaining 18 years of the PFI the council are expecting to find the rest.
A Cabinet report in July 2018, however, set out the council’s wish to find £50million of savings from the contract, said to be worth £726million.
To find the savings, in a contract they helped draw up, figures revealed in a Freedom of Information request to the Isle of Wight Council show, over the 39 months Jasmine Consulting was paid £732,859.99 — £7,699.99 of that on expenses. £521,196 was for consultancy services and a further £203,964 to provide legal, technical, and financial expertise specifically earmarked for the Milestone 14 end to the Core Investment Period.
Jasmine director Jay Jayasundara was hired by the Isle of Wight Council to help design, procure and negotiate the Highways PFI Contract, as programme director, over 11 years ago but left the council position before the contract started in April 2013. When savings were needed to be found, Jasmine was brought back 5 years later to find areas funding could be cut from.
Council officers from the PFI contract management team said in the FOI response the council was confident the services offered by Jasmine Consulting had proved to be ‘extremely valuable’ in the ongoing work in managing the Island Roads contract arrangements and ensuring value for money for the Island.
Historic savings of £2million had been agreed between the Isle of Wight Council and Island Roads, to be received by the end of September, and subject to contract changes being signed between parties.
Overall, the council say savings have been achieved by reducing operational service standards provided as part of the contract, including the frequency and response times of horticultural services, street cleaning and removing obsolete highway assets no longer required.
The ‘most significant saving’ the council had achieved was £7.4million for reducing the hand-back condition of the highways network at the end of the contract.
Well we all knew Dave Stewarts council was corrupt and this just about proves it…. I hope more comes to light soon as well.
I have set up my own consultancy business to give rubbish advice and then two years later i am
going to earn hundreds of thousands to correct my original advice.
Will only work if you have a mate on the council and some spare brown envelopes.
these are not savings. these are cuts.
our roads will be in the same or worse condition at the end of the contract.
short sighted and will cost more in the end
Not sure that entirely fair. Yes, it’s cost a small fortune but the roads used to be shocking before and I think we forget how bad they were. Mind you, I for one am fed up of the roadworks everywhere and wish they were planned better.
My understanding of this is that ‘savings’ have been made by reducing standards? That’s not a saving – paying less to get less, which explains why so many repairs are having to be revisited within months to repair sinks, degraded road surfaces and poorly phased ATS.