HISTORIC PRESS RELEASE : New Treasury Taskforce PFI Policy Team Announced [October 1998]

The press release issued by HM Treasury on 24 April 1998.

Tim Wilson, who previously worked for HM Prison Service, has been appointed to succeed Peter Wanless as Head of the Treasury Taskforce Private Finance Policy Team, following the departure of Mr Wanless to the Department for Education and Employment, the Treasury announced today.

Since May 1995, Mr Wilson has been head of the Contracts and Competition Group (CCG) unit within HM Prison Service (England and Wales), responsible for the award of contracts for the private management of prisons. Since then, the CCG has delivered 1,900 PFI prison places at three sites, all of which were brought into use on time or ahead of schedule.

Mr Wilson has spoken about the contractual management of prisons and PFI procurement at a number of conferences in the United States and Canada as well as in England. He is due to speak at a workshop session on the Prison Service’s experience at the first Taskforce Conference (“Better, Faster, Cheaper – Making the PFI Work”) at the Business Design Centre, London on Monday 27 April.

He is also a member of the Evaluation Panel for the Republic of South Africa’s privately funded prison programme which is based on many of the same approaches to the contractual management of prisons and PFI procurement as those followed by the Prison Service.

Mr Wilson is due to take up appointment at the beginning of May. He is 47, and has four children.