The Interserve-led consortium Environments for Learning (E4L) has reached financial close on a £63 million schools project for St Helens Council.

Interserve will undertake construction work on two schools, Rainford High Technology College and De La Salle School, at a capital cost of £48 million, part of which will be financed through a private finance initiative (PFI) structure. Interserve will subsequently deliver facilities management services at Rainford worth £15 million over a 25-year period. E4L’s partner Agilisys will be providing ICT equipment and related managed services.

At De La Salle, which will have places for 1,215 pupils from ages 11 to 16, some 45 per cent of the buildings will be new while the remainder will undergo major refurbishment. Rainford, where 65 per cent of the facilities will be new, will have 1,650 places for pupils from ages 11 to 18. Both schools will be co-educational. There will be phased handovers, with the final phase at Rainford expected to be ready for occupation in the spring term of 2013 and at De La Salle in the summer term.


E4L and St Helens Council will form the St Helens Local Education Partnership (LEP), a strategic partnership through which the consortium will have the opportunity to put forward proposals to work with the council on future developments over a 10-year period.

Interserve and its consortium partner Barclays European Infrastructure Fund will each invest £1.8 million of equity and subordinated debt in the project, representing 99 per cent of the whole, with St Helens council providing the remaining 1 per cent. Senior debt funding of £33 million is being provided by The Co-operative Bank.

Adrian Ringrose, Chief Executive of Interserve, said: "I am very pleased that we can now proceed with developing these new schools. We shall be using the best of our knowledge and experience as one of the country’s leading educational construction and service providers to create the kind of facilities that will enhance the learning prospects for the pupils studying there."

Andrew Sykes, senior manager of the PFI and Project Finance Team of The Co-operative Bank, said: “We’re delighted to have provided project funding for this local education development which underlines the Bank’s commitment to supporting social infrastructure projects in the north-west.”