1.34 The market consultation exercise carried out by the Taskforce had identified several areas where the finance markets had concerns about the proposed standard contract terms. These concerns and the fact that such a competition had not been held before for a public sector project resulted in Exchequer Partnership having serious reservations about undertaking a funding competition. To provide Exchequer Partnership with some degree of comfort the Treasury agreed to go ahead with the project if the final unitary payment did not exceed an agreed upper limit.
1.35 The competition generated a significant amount of interest to provide the project funding. All 19 of the potential funders that responded to the invitation to pre-qualify were implicitly agreeing to accept the standard contract in a wholly or largely unaltered state. The competition, therefore, gained wide acceptance of the standard terms and conditions, which were published in July 1999 following extensive consultations with the public and private sectors during the preceding year.