Recommendations relating to the operational phase:

•  authorities should ensure that value for money is maintained over the life of a project;

•  contractors should expect to lose their investment in PFI projects when things go wrong and to be rewarded reasonably when things go well;

•  the public sector should not insulate the contractor from the consequence of the risk that it has been paid to take on;

•  staff responsible for managing PFI projects must be equipped with the appropriate skills;

•  very little information is available about the returns that private sector partners earn on PFI projects; a review should be undertaken by the Office of Government Commerce;

•  there should be a proper handover from the procurement phase to the operational phase; and

•  the public sector needs to be more commercially aware.