18 The Department's decision to establish PfS has helped to achieve effective programme management. PfS provides national leadership and is able to carry out programme management activities which the Department and Local Authorities could not carry out by themselves. PfS provides skilled specialist people that the Department would find difficult to recruit. It has also exercised effective control over the overall scope, flow and cost of the programme in a way that could not be done by individual Local Authorities. PfS provides structured programme management and practical support to Local Authorities, including standardised documentation and guidance, and facilitates learning from experience between Local Authorities. Its overall costs, combined with those of the Department, are comparable to other programmes with central administration of devolved capital spending, such as the Department of Health's Local Improvement Finance Trust programme, the Housing Corporation's Affordable Housing Programme and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' Waste Infrastructure Development Programme.
19 PfS's corporate targets emphasise the timeliness of delivery. These influence performance bonuses received by PfS staff of up to 20 per cent. Although PfS's guidance and review of Local Authority plans highlight the importance of the quality of the schools being built, 70 per cent of the corporate targets are weighted towards timeliness of delivery. The Department and PUK are developing an additional set of quality performance indicators to use in future.
20 The benchmarking tool developed by PfS to help control capital costs needs to be developed further so it is useful to all Local Authorities. PfS has developed a benchmarking tool for cost and price data to help Local Authorities gain assurance on value for money, given the ten-year exclusivity period of the LEP. It has been used where competition has been weak, but cannot as yet provide a benchmark for every Local Authority because it holds insufficient data. Effective use of the benchmarking information by Local Authorities will be essential to ensuring prices remain economic in the absence of competition.
21 PUK's role in helping to fund and manage PfS has resulted in higher rewards for PUK than it would get from a straightforward fee arrangement, although it also results in greater commitment and in-depth support to the programme. The funding arrangement is complex and exposes PUK to some of the programme's risks, particularly delay. PUK's return on its contribution is up to 13 per cent a year, assuming there are no delays or performance deductions.