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Social Infrastructure

Prisons

An interactive economic model of an availability-based prison PPP — watch cells earn the unitary charge while unavailable cells trigger deductions, see the availability vs services split, and run the investment case live.

Interactive model
Social Infrastructure · Prisons

What pays for a prison — and what eats the margin

A prison PPP is the opposite of a toll asset: there is no demand risk — the state pays a contracted, inflation-linked unitary charge for every place, whether or not the cell is full. The catch is performance: when a cell is unavailable or a service standard is missed, the contract docks the payment with weighted deductions. Because the operator's cost base — custodial staffing, FM — is sticky, those deductions fall almost entirely through to EBITDA. The case turns on the size of the estate, the unitary charge, and how reliably it is delivered.

1,200
£48k
98%
LIVE
Available cell earns its share of the unitary charge Unavailable cell triggers a payment deduction Custodial services staffing & FM payment Unitary charge paid at the gatehouse
Flows — annualised from current assumptionsper year
Revenue p.a.
£0
£0 / hr
EBITDA p.a.
£0
0% margin
Net revenue / place
£0
after deductions
Prison places
0
98% available
Stocks — what the flows accumulate intolive
Deductions · session
£0
payments docked for failures
EBITDA banked · session
£0
accumulating in real time
Implied enterprise value
£0
at 16× EBITDA
Where revenue comes from Total £0 p.a.
Availability
Services
Why investors like prison PPPs: the unitary charge is a long-dated, government-backed, inflation-linked annuity with no demand or volume risk — the gold standard of contracted cash flow, which supports very high leverage and low equity returns. The flip side is operational, not commercial, risk: availability and performance deductions. With a fixed cost base, a few points of lost availability flow almost entirely to EBITDA — so disciplined delivery, not traffic, is what protects the return.
Revenue streams£0 p.a.
Operating costs£0 p.a.
Investment case — should you buy it?DCF returns

Year-1 financials flow live from the simulation above: revenue £0 and EBITDA £0 p.a. Set your deal terms below — the unlevered IRR (asset return) and levered IRR (return to equity, after debt) recompute instantly.

Operating

%
%
%
%
%
%

Valuation & hold

×
×
y

Financing

×
%
%
Unlevered IRR
—
asset / project return
Levered IRR
—
return to equity
Equity multiple
—
MOIC over hold
Equity gain
—
exit equity − invested
Equity cash-flow profile£m · ■ invested   ■ returned
Projection — £m per year

Illustrative model. Represents an availability-based prison PPP/PFI concession. Gross revenue = places × unitary charge, split into an availability (accommodation) payment and a custodial-services payment; net revenue deducts weighted availability/performance deductions of roughly 1.4× the pro-rata value of unavailable capacity. Operating costs (custodial staffing, facilities management, healthcare & programmes, insurance, lifecycle & SPV costs) are dominated by per-place staffing and are largely fixed against availability — so deductions fall almost entirely through to EBITDA. EBITDA = net revenue − operating costs; excludes upfront construction capex and senior debt service. The investment case is a simplified DCF. For illustration only — not investment advice, and not any specific asset.