7.3 As stated in section 1 the Government announced its commitment, in July 2011, to deliver at least £1.5 billion in savings from operational PFI projects in England.
7.4 This programme supports the efficiency, transparency and growth agendas, its overarching objectives are to:
• improve efficiency and value for money by delivering maximum benefit from reviewing the portfolio of privately financed contracts in England, with a minimum initial commitment of £1.5 billion in savings as set out by the Commercial Secretary to the Treasury;
• improve performance by identifying examples of good practice and learning to feed into the market to improve delivery and support their integration into PF2 to support the efficient delivery of future social infrastructure and contribute to supporting economic growth; and
• improve relationships by developing and embedding a voluntary code of conduct to set ground rules for engagement between contracting parties as part of a plan to improve transparency, understanding and behaviours on both sides and to support effective relationships in long term contracts.
7.5 There are over 700 operational projects within the scope of the programme with a remaining nominal revenue commitment of more than £200 billion. These contracts are spread across the whole of the public sector with over 75 per cent owned by local bodies including local authorities and NHS Trusts.
7.6 A central team within the Treasury has been established to co-ordinate the activities of departments and teams working on individual projects to set direction, provide guidance and enable communication across the sectors. The team is working to ensure that all projects benefit from being able to leverage the full support of government and the shared knowledge gained from across a wide spectrum of deals.
7.7 It is the ambition of the Government that all contracting authorities should carry out a comprehensive review of their projects to identify potential opportunities for efficiencies and savings across the following headline areas:
• contract terms;
• contract management;
• financing;
• operational service element (scope); and
• non-operational service elements (e.g. insurance).