In December 2025, the PFI project company responsible for maintaining 88 schools in Stoke‑on‑Trent entered into voluntary liquidation while millions of pounds’ worth of repairs remained outstanding. The local authority therefore had to fund around £3.5m in remedial works, despite having paid more than £400m in unitary payments over the lifespan of the project.

That episode offers a cautionary glimpse of the risks embedded in a growing wave of PFI project expiries, where asset condition, lifecycle funding, and contractual ambiguity collide just as incentives and cash flows are dwindling. The lesson from the Stoke schools project underlines the point that ignoring the approach of project expiry does not prevent its arrival but is more likely to ensure that the reckoning is sharper, more costly and harder to control.

Concerns about ill-preparedness are not new. In 2020 the National Audit Office concluded that the public sector lacked a strategic and consistent approach to managing PFI project expiry and risked failing to secure value for money. Since then, a substantial body of guidance has been produced, encouraging public bodies to begin planning for expiry at an early stage, often at least seven years in advance.

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