Engineer sues NHS trust in PFI dispute

Consulting engineer Cundall Johnston & Partners has filed a High Court writ against the trust in a dispute over payment for work carried out before the scheme was abandoned. It is claiming almost £500,000 plus costs for work on the project.

The scheme was abandoned in late 2005 after one of the PFI bidders, the Balfour Beatty-led Consort, pulled out, leaving Bouygues as the only candidate.

Cundall Johnston & Partners said it had been paid for advice carried out at an early stage of the PFI, but not for enabling and decant works or for work on the construction of an energy centre.

Cundall Johnston & Partners is accusing the trust of breach of contract in not paying the money and is demanding payment in full. It is suing for payment of £448,754 and interest of £80,494 as well as interest running at £142 a day.

Despite concerns about the viability of the PFI in April 2005, the trust made it clear that the firm ought to continue to provide services for work already under way, the writ says.

By October 2005 the trust had been invoiced for a total of almost £300,000 that was not paid. The writ says that on 17 May 2006 Simon Covill, the deputy director of finance at the trust, wrote saying the director responsible for the works project no longer worked there, and he could not find paperwork verifying that the fees demanded were due.

The withdrawal of Consort forced the Treasury to review the use of PFI to procure the hospital, leading to calls for the PFI route to be revised to avoid wasted bid costs.

Cundall and Whipps Cross NHS Trust declined to comment.

Since then, several other PFI schemes have been scrapped or scaled back, leading to expectations that bidders will pursue clients for costs.

The most recent case involves the £711m Leicester PFI, abandoned in July. A consortium of John Laing, Laing O’Rourke, and Serco, was preferred bidder on the scheme.