Govt’s revised NHP gives a boost to North East hospitals
The government has released an updated review of the New Hospitals Plan, setting out revised timelines for the 40 hospitals that were due to be built or refurbished by 2030 with good news in particular for Consett’s Shotley Bridge.
In the North East, the delayed Shotley Bridge Community Hospital in Co. Durham, will now start construction between 2026-27 as part of the ‘wave 1’ projects, with a budget of £500m.
Planning permission for the hospital was granted in 2023 and construction was expected to finish this year, however a series of delays has meant that work has not yet started.
Designed by Medical Architecture, the building will be arranged around two landscaped courtyards and include a 16-bed inpatient ward, an urgent care centre, and a medical investigations unit for cancer services alongside a chemotherapy day unit.
Elsewhere in the North East, Northumberland’s £72m CEDAR programme upgrades are already underway and will continue to be carried out as part of the Wave 0 schemes already under construction.
Sir Robert McAlpine is the contractor on the project, which will upgrade mental health services at the Care Environment Development programme by creating a centre of excellence at Northgate Hospital in Morpeth; refurbishing a children’s mental health and learning disability unit at Prudhoe; and reconfiguring and re-providing adult’s mental health acute inpatient services at the Bamburgh Unit in Gosforth.
Previously, hospitals have been built individually by trusts. The NHP’s standardised approach intends to improve budget and time issues by encouraging economies of scale, supporting engagement with the construction market, providing a blueprint for hospital designs, and improving productivity.
Following the review by the government, the NHP will now be delivered through consecutive waves of investment.
Each wave will set construction start dates for schemes over a five-year period, and comprise a group of hospitals that will start construction within each wave.
Wes Streeting, health secretary, said when announcing the updated plans: “The NHS is quite literally crumbling. I have visited hospitals where the roof has fallen in, pipes regularly leak and even freeze over in winter.
“As Lord Darzi found in his investigation, the NHS was starved of capital in the 2010s, with £37bn under-investment over the 2010s.
“This lack of investment meant the UK construction sector did not have the appetite and capacity to build the number of concurrent hospitals required to deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030 when this promise was made.
“Delivery is dependent on providing certainty to develop relationships and secure investments in the supply chain which would ensure this vital hospital infrastructure is realised.
“This review was launched for two reasons. First, to put the programme on a firm footing with sustainable funding, so all the projects can be delivered. Second, to give patients an honest, realistic, deliverable timetable in which they can have confidence.”
