How much has Jay Jayasundara 'saved' from PFI contract you asked

As reported last week, the man who used to pull in £180+k/year package while he was setting up the Isle of Wight highways PFI contract with Island Roads is back at the Isle of Wight council (IWC) being paid to find ‘savings’ in the contract.

Plus £750/month rent
Having just been paid £95,000 for six months’ work, Jay Jayasundara’s (JJ) monthly rent of £750 is also being paid for by IWC – something they say is perfectly normal for contractors when the work goes on for a long period of time.

Are they PFI 'savings' or cuts?

The council talks of ‘savings’ to the PFI. Of course, everyone likes savings. Let’s take a deeper look.

The Highways PFI is locked down in a mammoth contract, so if the council want to spend less money on it, they have to ask Island Roads what they are happy to change or drop out.

So the ‘savings’ mean the council will be paying out less money, but in return, there will be cuts made to what what was originally agreed in the PFI contract.

No more ‘Gold standard’
In the March 2017 announcement of PFI ‘savings’, the executive member then (briefly) responsible for PFI, Cllr Jon Gilbey, described the cuts as meaning, “we’re not going to end up with a gold standard piece of work”.

Example
One example – originally the resurfacing of Isle of Wight roads had to be carried out to a standard that would not require repair work on them for a seven year period after the end of the 25 year contract.

After the negotiation, this was compromised, meaning, if the roads were to fall apart the day after the contact ends, the council would have no comeback. This was traded for a £200k ‘saving’.

How much is being ‘saved’
As might be expected when it’s revealed someone is being paid handsomely from public funds, the question of how much JJ has managed to ‘save’ from the contract was raised and OnTheWight got in touch with the council to find out more.

A spokesperson for the council told OnTheWight,

“Jasmine Consulting is assisting in final negotiations for the first phase of a savings programme (in relation to the highways PFI contract), which amounts to £0.6 million per annum, indexed for the remaining 19 years of the contract.”

For those not sure how indexing works, it means in the 2019/20 budget the council will pay £600,000 less for the contract than previously agreed. During subsequent years, that £600k figure will rise in line with inflation.

Equivalent to £11.4 million over 19 years
The spokesperson expended on this saying,

“These savings will start to accrue from the start of the next contract year on 1 April 2019 and at today’s value are equivalent to total savings of £11.4 million [across the entire contract].”

Further savings promised, but …
They finished by adding,

“Jasmine Consulting is also designing the next phases of the savings delivery to be delivered from 1 April 2020, amounting to a further £29 million.”

No details
OnTheWight also asked for an itemised breakdown for the savings delivery programme, but the IWC say they can’t provide them, saying,

“These are still subject to final confirmation before the details can be released.”

Mystery
Quite how the council can announce the level of financial savings without having the confidence to detail exactly what will be cut from the contract is currently a mystery.

How much has Jay Jayasundara ‘saved’ from PFI contract you asked – Here’s what we found out

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