At least half of the 40 new hospitals promised by Prime Minister Boris Johnson will not be built until the 2040s, the Guardian has learned, in a move described as “devastating” for staff and patients.
Labor is preparing to announce that many of England's aging NHS hospitals, due to be replaced by 2030, will be effectively excluded from a deadline for building plans.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting will criticize the Conservatives for bequeathing to Labor a huge infrastructure project that was only budgeted until March this year and whose cost has ballooned to an estimated £30bn.
The announcement, likely to be made early next week, leaves around 20 reconstructions in limbo, with many patients forced to continue treatment in increasingly dangerous environments and buildings unfit for purpose. It will not happen.
Heads of affected trusts will be furious, and the decision is likely to draw criticism from local MPs once a government review of the program is announced.
Mr Streeting said in September that 12 of the 40 projects, including new construction and renovations within hospitals, were viable, with seven of them at immediate risk of collapse due to the use of Laac concrete. He said there was.
But he also ordered a review of the cost, feasibility and schedule of the procedure with 25 other hospitals, where some of the older and dilapidated hospitals are collapsing and patient care is increasingly disrupted. Ta.
Officials say only a small number of the 25 plans, perhaps fewer than five, could go ahead by 2030 because ministers cannot find the funding to proceed.
Street said any delays in redevelopment will eventually materialize and will revise the cost of the plan. Many of the studies are already well advanced and all are desperately needed, the trust said.
The Ministry of Finance, which is grappling with tight budgets, is playing a key role in the drastic reduction of the New Hospital Program (NHP). Projects that are downgraded are “kicked into the long grass” and will only be implemented at an unspecified point in the future.
Shiva Anandashiva, head of policy at health think tank The King's Fund, said: “We will have to wait for the full review, but it will be a shock to staff and patients to hear that plans to rebuild local hospitals may be scrapped. I guess so.'' In the long grass, real doubts now remain as to whether some of the deprioritized hospitals will really be rebuilt.
“The suspension or postponement of hospital reconstruction plans is also likely to be a false economy.” [as] Many hospitals already spend large sums of taxpayer money maintaining substandard buildings. ”
The Liberal Democrats said it was “completely unacceptable” to abandon long-standing plans to rebuild 40 hospitals as expected.
“Patients in these areas have been told that these hospitals will save their local health services. It would be completely unacceptable to deny them what they were promised and the better care they deserve. ', said Helen Morgan, the party's health and social care spokeswoman.
She further added: “The current state of this plan is a shocking indictment of the Tories’ contempt for patients in these communities. But equally shocking is the New Labor government’s lack of ambition for them. be.
“To throw these projects into the long grass and put them in a pile of too much trouble shows that the minister's attitude towards the health service is all wrong.”
The hospitals whose futures are being considered by this review regularly suffer from problems caused by the weak state of their infrastructure as a result of repeated delays and uncertainty around the programme.
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For example, the Epsom and St Helier Trust in Surrey had to cancel around 300 eye surgeries last summer after the operating room's ventilation system failed. Similarly, the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Essex closed two operating theaters for several weeks and canceled 36 surgeries after an air handling unit failed. Health Services Journal reported.
In a letter to all UK MPs announcing the review in September, Mr Streeting warned that some projects were likely to be delayed for many years and the NHP to be cut back.
Mr Streeting said: “Due to inheriting a program that has not been funded beyond March 2025, and due to the extensive financial inheritance that has been extremely difficult, we plan to move forward with the program as long as fiscal conditions allow. It may be necessary to consider revising the
“A structured and agreed rolling investment approach means that progressing these plans will be subject to investment decisions in future Spending Reviews.”
NHS Confederation chief executive Matthew Taylor said the risk from crumbling hospitals was now too great, with some hospitals “outright unsafe”.
Some crumbling hospitals, such as Stockport's Stepping Hill, are not included in the NHP's list of 40 plans, despite having major problems.
The lack of funding in the NHS to repair and rebuild facilities that have reached the end of their natural lifespan prompted Barking and Havering NHS Trust in Essex last week to issue posters urging patients to write to their local MPs. It came to light after being posted at Queen's Hospital in Romford. Of this, Streeting is seeking support for its efforts to raise £35m to extend A&E. It is so crowded that it sometimes has to serve twice the 350 patients per day it was built to accommodate. This is also not part of the new hospital program.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “The results of the NHP review will be announced soon, but we remain fully committed to delivering on all projects for the hospital.
“The new hospital program we inherited was scheduled to run out of funding in March 2025 and could not be delivered. We are planning to make an announcement.”
