WORCESTERSHIRE Royal Hospital will end up costing taxpayers more than 10 times the amount it cost to build.

In November 2009 John Rostill, chief executive of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said the cost of paying back private investors over 30 years for the £82 million hospital would stand at about £720 million.

But Simon Burns, Minister for Health, wrote to Worcester MP Robin Walker last week telling him it is likely to cost £852 million in total.

This comes as momentum gathers for a campaign to get the Government to hold talks with private finance initiative (PFI) companies in a bid to cut costs.

While Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and Catalyst, the company behind the PFI deal for Worcestershire Royal Hospital, both declined to comment, Mr Walker said: “PFI contracts will always cost money, but if you look at more recent ones, they are more likely to cost four times the amount rather than 10 times.

"It just shows how bad value for money we got on that deal.”

Mr Burns estimated that about £233 million has been spent since the contract was awarded to Catalyst in March 1999.

That includes the costs of construction, building maintenance and management, as well as providing and replacing equipment.

The estimated cost to be incurred for the remaining 19 years of the PFI contract is £619 million, he said.

PFIs were a Conservative idea taken on by Labour in 1997 with the aim of building state-of-the-art schools, hospitals and other public buildings using loans of private cash.

We previously reported how Conservative MPs across south Worcestershire are backing Hereford and South Herefordshire MP Jesse Norman’s move to get a rebate on public/private sector deals.

Mr Walker said: “The campaign is gathering pace and we are getting regular questions in the house and a lot of publicity for the things we are doing.

"We’ve got to build that pressure for the Government to do something and get PFI companies to sit down with them.”

Mr Walker said he thought MPs should act collectively rather than try to bring costs down for projects in their own constituencies.

“I don’t think we will have any success getting individual companies to give individual rebates,” he said. “We’ve got to look at the whole picture.”

Worcestershire Royal Hospital, which opened its doors in March 2002, was one of more than 100 hospitals built under PFI.