The New Hospitals We Need...

Wyllow3

A lot of things concern me, far from ideal, but where is the money to come from.

The funding for the complete rebuild of WhippsX had already been secured under the last government. Work had already begun, starting with the car park. The money was there for this particular hospital, but many others weren't so lucky.
Labour promised that the building programme was safe in the election. Unsurprisingly, once in government Labour’s first action was to pause the rebuild.
I know this for a fact because Iain Duncan Smith was our MP, re elected in 2024, and an acquaintance of DH.

I think the way forward is to reform the system. Increase investment in primary care, community health hubs for diagnostics etc, and care in people's own homes.

Hospitals are expensive to run and we need fewer, but better, of them.

A&E depts need to be saved for exactly that: Accident and emergencies, and not for people who can't get GP appointments.

Ilovecheese

Tell me you didn't believe in Boris Johnson's 40 new hospitals!

No, I didn't believe in Boris's 40 new hospitals.
I can't think why.

A lot of things concern me, far from ideal, but where is the money to come from.

Where we lived in NE London, we were due to get a new hospital (Barts Trust) in 2026. Then it was 2030. Now today Wes Streeting has said it won't even start to be built until 2032 or 2034.

The added problem is that the new design will now be too small for the intended purposes, and that the end- of- life care unit might no longer be included. It really concerns me that any government would not give additional funding for this very important service to be included within an NHS hospital.

Yes, work on only 16 of them will commence in the next 5 years.

There is to be 4 waves of building.

The seven rebuilds in “wave zero”, which are already well advanced, would be completed by 2028, Streeting said.

Wave one projects will begin between 2025 and 2030 and will comprise seven hospitals built with Raac concrete, which has become dangerously unstable, and nine other projects where a new facility is desperately needed.

Construction will start on nine wave two schemes including the Sutton facility in 2030-2035, and work on the final eight is due to start during 2035-39.

The cost of delivering the new hospitals has shot up to £48.7bn from the £20bn price the then health secretary, Steve Barclay, put on the work in just May 2023. The Tories only spent £3.7bn on the programme

Labour will put £15bn into each of the three future waves, comprising an average of £3bn a year for the 15 years between 2025 and 2039, to make the schemes a reality.

Tell me you didn't believe in Boris Johnson's 40 new hospitals!