Managing risk and regulation within new local 'health economies': The case of NHS LIFT (Local Improvement Finance Trust)

This paper analyses NHS Local Improvement Finance Trust (LIFT), a relatively new policy that shifts UK primary care premises into corporate ownership. LIFT is a more
radical version of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), and may indicate the future
direction of neoliberal welfare services. Like PFI, LIFT foregrounds issues of risk and
regulation, enabling their reconceptualisation. This echoes certain themes present in the
sociology of risk, including the idea that the welfare state has created and amplified,
rather than managed, risk. Under LIFT, risks are constructed as (a) primarily economic
and (b) primarily from the point of view of the large commercial organisations involved.
Evidence presented here depicts banks as risk averse, challenging assumptions that
private firms display risk-taking behaviour.

Citation:
Aldred, R (2008) ‘Managing risk and regulation within new local 'health economies': The case of NHS LIFT (Local Improvement Finance Trust)’ Health, Risk & Society 10 (1) 23-36.