Devastation’ of Collapse of Labour’s Liverpool Royal Carillion PFI Deal

The devastation caused to Mersyside health ervices, including many Southport patients, will not be hitting hospital Chief Executive Aidan Kehoe, too hard in the pocket personally as he has headed off to take over the Hamad General Hospital in Doha, Qatar. But, before he jetted off to the multimillion pound provate health service of the Middle East, the Knotty Ash native has publicly shared harsh thoughts about the effects the ‘Diddle Men’ of NHS finance had, forcing him to spend an entire year picking up the pieces after the collapse of construction giant Carillion.

Carillion, who were granted the ‘design build and run’ Liverpool Royal Private Finance Initiative (PFI) by the Alan Milburn (above) as a flagship for the NHS privatisation policies of last Labour government. They were in an advanced stage of building the new Royal Liverpool Hospital when the firm went ‘belly up’ – leading to the biggest insolvency in UK history. Carillion had already delayed the opening of the planned  £335 million new hospital by more than a year but the final collapse came as an unexpected, devastating blow.

Aidan Kehoe says that the Carillion fiasco had “taken a lot out of me. It did come on quite suddenly really in terms of how dramatic it all was.”

“There had been some rumours that they were having financial issues but them actually going into liquidation, I think it was a shock, it was a shock for everybody.”

“It was devastating really, it really was, and I mean on a number of fronts. For us, our patients and our staff, our staff had been looking forward to getting in there. . . .so it was a blow for them.”

A year on, construction is back underway after national government put the remainder of the contract in the hands of multinational building firm Laing O’Rourke.  It is hoped to be able to move services and patients across from the crumbling old hospital at the end of 2020.