Re Contract

    Interserve Closes Peterborough Prison PFI

Facility will be UK's First Ever Prison for Males and Females

Following the signing of the Ashford prison Private Finance Initiative (PFI)
contract in December, Interserve and its partners have closed a further
substantial PFI contract with Her Majesty's Prison Service (HMPS) to create and
operate a new prison at Peterborough, Cambridgeshire. Opening in early 2005, it
will be the first purpose-built facility in the United Kingdom to accommodate
both male and female inmates.

Interserve Project Services will be responsible for the design and
construction, which will begin immediately, while partner United Kingdom
Detention Services (UKDS) is contracted to operate the prison over a period of
25 years from opening.

The prison will have 840 places of which 480 are for men and 360 for women.
Housing both sexes on one site has significant implications for both design and
management, and Interserve worked closely with UKDS to prepare a proposal that
took these issues fully into account.

There will be a mixture of single and double cells and the women's
accommodation will include a mother-and-baby unit. The prison will be designed
to provide safe and secure accommodation within a caring regime that offers
opportunities for education and training and focuses on reducing re offending.

Interserve director John Vyse welcomed the award of the contract. "This is a
particularly rewarding project to win," he said, "because in many ways we'll be
breaking new ground. In addition to the fundamentals of value for money and
certainty of delivery, we and UKDS also had to demonstrate a real insight into
the gender issues involved. Our ability to handle these aspects in our designs
certainly played a part in our success, as did our track record with the Prison
Service."

Interserve and other consortium members Sodexho Alliance (UKDS's parent
company) and Royal Bank of Scotland are taking equity stakes in the project
through their respective investment subsidiaries. The senior funding package of
£83 million was arranged and underwritten by The Royal Bank of Scotland.



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