'Crumbling' North Tees hospital needs to save £20m

Millions of pounds are being spent maintaining the old buildings

Hospital trust bosses facing the rising costs of repairing crumbling buildings say they have to save more than £20.7m.

The University Hospital of North Tees buildings have been labelled "not fit for purpose" but a £380m bid to build a new hospital was rejected by the government in May.

North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Trust director Stuart Irvine said the savings target was a "significant challenge".

The buildings could end up costing £300m to maintain, he said.

Trust reviews had concluded they only had eight years of useful life left, with leaking roofs and windows, broken ceiling panels and freezing pipes.

Water leaks and bad weather have exacerbated the problem

Mr Irvine told a trust directors' board meeting work was under way to identify what could be done and how much it would cost.

Non-executive director Chris Macklin told the meeting there was external pressure to "come up with more recurrent savings, that deliver each and every year".

However, trust managing director Neil Atkinson stressed the need to save money would not risk patient safety.

"We have mechanisms to ensure that we don't do something that would ultimately be detrimental to patients," he said.

The board said the problems would not be allowed to risk patient safety

Trust reports showed the buildings would endanger patients, staff and the public if not maintained, and would be beyond their effective use by 2031, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

Mr Atkinson said "somewhere between £8m to £10m" was being spent on "backlog maintenance" in the current year.

"Colleagues will have seen all of the scaffolding going up around the north wing," he said.

"It is a huge amount of investment.

"I think the concern is that amount of money will increase each and every year, because the maintenance required on an old building will increase quite significantly over a relatively short period of time."