Unlocking a £2m+ gain from Tameside Schools PFI

Refinancing a schools PFI agreement is a complex, time-limited exercise. Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council needed a financial adviser who could provide assurance that a genuinely competitive process among a shrinking pool of long-term PFI lenders had been undertaken, build the robust case needed to secure Department for Education approval, and manage the transaction through to completion, all while keeping the Council's exposure to risk, and to aborted costs, as low as possible.

Grant Thornton acted as financial adviser to the Council throughout 2025, supporting the refinancing through to completion in January 2026. Our work included assessing a competitive funder process and testing terms from multiple institutional lenders to ensure the Council secured the best available outcome.

We modelled the projected refinancing gain and the Council's share of it under the project agreement, and stress-tested this against the additional termination liability the refinancing would create. We prepared a financial advisers' report structured around HM Treasury's five-case model to support the Council's internal governance and its approval request to the Department for Education, and worked alongside the Council's finance team through the mechanics of completion.

The refinancing reached financial close in January 2026, delivering the Council a gain of more than £2m from the transaction, secured as an upfront lump sum available for reinvestment in local services.

A competitive funder process helped secure favourable terms for the Council, and the additional termination liability created by the refinancing is projected to be outweighed by the gain within two years. The refinancing proceeded with Department for Education approval and full visibility for the Council's governance process.

At a time of significant pressure on local authority budgets, the gain gives the Council a meaningful, one-off sum to direct towards its wider priorities.