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In August 2009 we brought the Blackburn scheme to financial close for NHS Blackburn with Darwen.  It is the ninth scheme to reach financial close under East Lancashire LIFT (on which we have advised on all but the earliest) and it is the second scheme for NHS Blackburn with Darwen.  It has a capital value of around £21 million and it will see a new health facility open off Barbara Castle Way in Blackburn.  The new health centre is set to include innovative features such as a rooftop running track, garden gym area and a vertical wall vegetable patch.

This project is a typical example of Hempsons delivering a full legal service to the PCT: handling the land transfer, negotiating the LPA and the relevant funding, construction and estates maintenance documentation, as well as reviewing the overall robustness of the project structure and guiding the PCT through the process.  However, it also had some notable features: it faced a number of planning and funding difficulties and as a result the professional advisers acting for LIFTco and the PCT faced some significant logistical, technical and timescale challenges, all of which were imposed by the funders.  We ensured that the PCT and LIFTco were both able to meet these challenges and we did so partly by taking full responsibility for the drafting and delivery of the LPA (as we had on phase 5 above) and partly also by working closely with the legal advisers for LIFTco in a common commitment to project delivery.

Our long-term involvement with East Lancashire LIFT on behalf of the PCT participants has afforded us the opportunity to develop a series of close working relationships.  Our relationships with our PCT clients and their financial advisers are the most important of these, but we believe that measurable gains – in the terms of the deal – i.e. legal, technical and financial - have been made as a result of our careful co-ordination with the PCT’s financial advisers and through the healthy respect we have earned in the eyes of LIFTco’s lawyers and those of the private sector LIFTco participants.

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