Building work will start this month on the UK’s first NHS Trust hospital to be built under the PFI scheme.
Details of the project were agreed in February but the final go-ahead – given this week – depended on the National Health Service (Private Finance) Act securing Royal Assent.
The £100m, 400-bed hospital will be built at Darenth Park, Kent, for the Dartford & Gravesham NHS Trust and will be fully operational in 2000.
Winning consortium The Hospital Company – led by Tarmac Group and United Medical Enterprises – and two equity investment funds, Innestree and BZW Private Equity, will invest £13m in the project, which will cost a total of £143m, including the associated roads and landscaping.
