Satisfaction with performance has improved significantly since last year, with 71% of health sector contracts and 45% of education contracts reporting 'very good' performance. This compares with 56% and 31% respectively in the last survey. When it comes to operational relationships, the picture is similar in both health and education. 58% of educational contracts report very good relationships compared with 57% for health. Around 25% of contracts in each sector are reporting satisfactory or poor relationships.
Financial expectations have been different as well. For the survey overall 38% of managers said their profits had been worse than expected. In education and health specifically this poor profit performance rose to 48% and 41% of contracts respectively.
The biggest problems experienced in health and education were cutbacks in public funding and poor build quality; the latter being the responsibility of the winning consortium. There may be a case for a price adjustment between members of the consortium in such circumstances, but it should not affect the price paid by the public sector. An additional issue in health contracts was changes in client requirements.