John Laing reaches financial close for Ad>ance

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Financial close has been reached on the Ł75 million Ad>ance project, in which John Laing will provide a new hospital for mental health and learning disabilities care to replace the existing St Luke’s Hospital in Middlesbrough for the Tees, Esk & Wear Valleys NHS Trust.

The new 312 bed hospital, with a floor area of 26,700 sq metres, will be used to provide a wide range of mental health and learning disability services. The buildings will be light and airy with plenty of gardens and outdoor areas, and give patients shared activity spaces similar to those they would find in the community. All the living accommodation will be at ground level, contributing to the hospital’s domestic scale. The development is the cornerstone of the Trust’s modernisation programme of service improvements.

John Laing will invest equity in the project, which will be built by Laing O’Rourke and maintained by John Laing Integrated Services over a 30-year concession. HBOS will provide Ł81m of senior debt having won a funding competition managed by John Laing and PwC with public sector oversight which will form the model for similar competitions in PFI hospital procurement in future.

Con Egan, Chief Executive for the Trust said: “This represents an important milestone in improving mental health services across Teesside and we are delighted to have reached financial close in record time. The design of the new hospital, which will be called Roseberry Park, will provide an enormously improved environment for patients, staff and carers and the step change in the delivery of services we need as we seek Foundation Trust Status.”

Peter Ward, Director of Healthcare Projects at John Laing Investments said: “"We are delighted to have been chosen to deliver this project, which will vastly improve the quality of the trust's facilities and the image of mental health and learning disability care. Its procurement also featured a number of new measures designed to offer better value to the NHS, such as new approval processes and a very competitive funding competition. To work through these and still reach financial close in six months does great credit to the experience, flexibility and collaboration of our teams".

ENDS

For further information contact:
The Madano Partnership 020 7593 4000, or
Christine Jones, communications manager at John Laing on 020 7901 3200

About John Laing

John Laing is one of the UK's leading investors, developers and operators of privately financed, public sector infrastructure projects such as health, education, roads and railways. Its core business is focused entirely upon the development of PFI/PPP projects and operations. The Group currently invests in a total of 62 projects.

About Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Trust

Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Trust was formed in April 2006 to provide mental healthcare services for the people of County Durham, Tees Valley and North East Yorkshire. It also provides a range of learning disability and addictive behaviour services in the area, as well specialist mental health and learning disability services to other parts of northern England.