'Significant delay' for hospital builds

Both the Queen's Medical Centre and Nottingham's City Hospital have been earmarked for rebuilding

Major plans to rebuild hospitals in Nottingham and Leicester have been delayed following a government review.

Nottingham's Queen's Medical Centre (QMC) and City Hospital, and Leicester General Hospital and Leicester Royal Infirmary (LRI) were included in the Conservative government pledge to build 40 new hospitals by 2030.

However, Labour Health Secretary Wes Streeting confirmed on Monday that work on the four schemes would not begin until later in the decade.

Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) NHS Trust said it was "very disappointing" that work on the QMC and City Hospitals had been pushed back.

NUH chief executive Anthony May said the trust had a £439m maintenance backlog

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the Nottingham hospital rebuilds project, called Tomorrow's NUH (TNUH), would now start between 2037 and 2039 and cost at least £2bn.

NUH chief executive Anthony May said: "Whilst we welcome the government's ongoing commitment to Tomorrow's NUH (TNUH), we are very disappointed that the review of the New Hospital Programme (NHP) announced today means significant delays to the TNUH scheme.

"This will not only considerably impact our patients and staff for the coming years but will also have a huge impact on our wider communities across the region."

Mr May added: "This will mean a significant delay to building a new Centre for Women, Children and Families for Nottingham.

"Our cancer patients will have to wait an additional decade to receive treatment in a bespoke Cancer Care building. Nottingham will continue to be one of the only acute hospitals in the country without a helipad.

"And we will not be able to build the much-anticipated multi-storey car parks at NUH for many years."

Mr May said the trust had maintenance backlog of £439m and that the investment was "desperately needed sooner rather than later".

Analysis

By Rob Sissons, East Midlands health correspondent

There are clearly mixed feelings among NHS workers when it comes to the delays to these major projects.

On the one hand, relief that there remains a commitment to continue with the building projects, but on the other some scepticism about whether they will ever be completed.

If a week is a long time in politics, then timescales stretching up to 2039 are perhaps an eternity and some NHS staff longing for new facilities will have retired.

Another stark feature of the hospital building programme are the spiralling costs.

The price of the Nottingham programme was originally put at £1bn, now the construction costs are estimated to be at least double that, according to the trust.

That is a combination of construction labour costs and the increased price of raw materials.

It is a similar picture in Leicester, where the original price tag of £450m is thought to now be about £1bn to £1.5bn.

And both trusts have a major backlog of maintenance, which they now face having to grapple with for much longer.

The LRI and Leicester General rebuilding scheme is to cost between £1bn and £1.5bn, with work to start between 2032 and 2034, the DHSC said.

Richard Mitchell, chief executive of the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, said: "While we recognise the financial challenges, we are clearly disappointed by this most recent decision to delay critical and long-awaited investment in healthcare for the people of Leicester, Leicestershire, and Rutland.

"It is too soon to fully understand the impact on our local plans, however we are determined to deliver the transformation our hospitals desperately need and that our communities and colleagues deserve.

"We will work closely with local and national partners to achieve this."

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the Tories' original pledge had offered "false hope".

The Tories said Labour had broken promises and should be prioritising investment in new buildings.