Senior lenders on Jarvis's former private finance initiative construction projects are understood to be withholding cash needed to complete work on schools and hospitals because they want to satisfy themselves that they are getting value for money.

It has emerged that the banks controlling the money will not release it until they have carried out their own audits, threatening further delays to projects including new acute facilities at the Whittington hospital in London and work on primary schools in Richmond upon Thames. Jarvis's apparent success in quitting its PFI obligations without jeopardising the 14 projects involved was hailed by proponents of PFIs as evidence that, even when the private sector runs into difficulties, the partnership model still works.