8.31 The NHS Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT) delivers investment in primary and community-based healthcare facilities to achieve more integrated local service provision. Individual primary care facilities are often relatively small - typically less than £5 million in capital value, and in many cases less than £1 million. The occupants and users of the facilities reflect the diverse mix of providers of primary health care - employees of Primary Care Trusts or local authorities, and self employed contractors or partnerships such as GPs, Pharmacists and Dentists. To meet the needs of these groups across a variety of small sites and retain private sector confidence in the programme requires a high level of procurement skills.
8.32 To meet this challenge, NHS Primary Care LIFT was created as a nationally managed procurement programme by Partnerships for Health (PfH), a company formed as a joint venture between the Department of Health and Partnerships UK. The key features of PfH's role are to:
• develop a standardised procurement approach, including the agreements to be entered into in relation to each scheme;
• create a team of experienced transactors who assist local teams to define their requirements effectively and to procure long term partners who can meet their objectives; and
• create a sustainable, predictable flow of transactions for the private sector to permit forward planning of future capacity to bid and implement such schemes.