Hospitals (UK)

Consort Healthcare, Balfour Beatty’s specialist organisation in the healthcare market, performed well in 2008.

Its portfolio consists of interests in nine major hospital projects with £123m of committed equity investment, including £7m at preferred bidder stage.

Four of the hospitals are fully operational – Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, University Hospital North Durham, the Royal Blackburn Hospital and University College London Hospital, the second stage of which was completed on time during 2008.

The new mental health facilities, part of the Birmingham New Hospitals scheme, were completed five weeks early and are now in operation. The remainder of the large-scale project at Birmingham is scheduled for completion in 2011 and will relocate most of the key clinical and mental health facilities to the south of the city in a single site. Total committed investment for this project is £23m.

Good progress has been made on the other hospital schemes currently under development. The Pinderfields and Pontefract Hospitals Development Project will deliver a new acute inpatient hospital in Wakefield on the existing Pinderfields Hospital site and a new diagnostic and treatment centre in Pontefract.

Tameside General Hospital and a new acute hospital at Hope Hospital, Salford are under construction.

Consort is preferred bidder for the Fife General Hospital and Maternity Services PPP and expects to reach financial close in the first half of 2009.