County council ‘saddled’ with £700m PFI debts

By The Newsroom
Published 6th Nov 2015, 06:00 BST
Cllr Peter Lamb, leader of Crawley Borough Council SUS-140108-120547001 SUS-140108-120547001Cllr Peter Lamb, leader of Crawley Borough Council SUS-140108-120547001 SUS-140108-120547001
Cllr Peter Lamb, leader of Crawley Borough Council SUS-140108-120547001 SUS-140108-120547001
PRIVATE Finance Initiative (PFI) debts at West Sussex County Council totalled more than £700million earlier this year.

The majority of councillors voted to approve a five-year £676million capital programme on Friday, but many expressed concerns over provisions for up to £75m extra borrowing. Leader Louise Goldsmith (Con, Chichester West) said this was an envelope to work with and not a target. But James Walsh (LDem, Littlehampton East), leader of the county council’s Lib Dem group, said that borrowing figures did not include the ‘eye watering’ £707million PFI debt that they were ‘saddled’ with as of March this year.

He felt that cabinet member for finance Michael Brown was adept at confusing councillors with ‘smoke and mirrors’. Dr Walsh said: “In the shadows is a much, much bigger debt burden hanging around our necks for the next 20 years because of our PFI programme, because effectively 100 years of Conservative under-investment in infrastructure in West Sussex.” But Mr Brown (Con, Fernhurst) explained they were given some support to repay the PFI debts to the tune of almost £13million a year.

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In his opening speech he explained that they were aiming to avoid their ‘gearing ratio’ exceeding 1:1, where total debt would be more than annual revenue spending.