Major developments at Trust included in Government’s new hospital building programme
Responding to the announcement by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP, of a new hospital building programme, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust chief executive Professor Tim Orchard said:
“We’re delighted that major developments at three of our hospitals are included in the Government’s new hospital building programme.
“We have made real progress over the past few months on the beginnings of practical and credible options for a full redevelopment of the St Mary’s site, as well as significant developments at our Charing Cross and Hammersmith sites, with the Western Eye being incorporated into these plans.
“Reflecting our refreshed organisational strategy and the wider north west London picture, our emerging plans support a new approach to working with our partners to provide more joined up care and support continuing innovation and clinical advances. They also recognise that we will require at least the same level of inpatient beds and both our existing A&E departments in order to meet future need.
“Our estate has the biggest backlog maintenance liability of any NHS organisation and, as our staff and patients are very aware, the state of many of our buildings makes it increasingly difficult to provide high quality care, with some pre-dating the NHS itself. We are working to progress the St Mary’s development as soon as possible, with funding primarily from the sale of surplus land. We will continue with our own programme of smaller scale estate improvements at Charing Cross and Hammersmith (and the co-located Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea) hospitals, before undertaking a mixture of major refurbishments and new build supported with central funding beginning around 2025/26. We will seek to co-locate the Western Eye within the most appropriate part of our estate as we have said previously.
“Our redevelopment approach involves staff, patients and stakeholders at every stage and we look forward to offering more opportunities for partnership working and involvement as we now move into a more formal phase of the programme, supported by additional, central funding.”
According to Government’s announcement made on 29 September, the new ‘Health Infrastructure Plan’ is a rolling five-year programme of investment in health infrastructure, including capital to build new hospitals, modernise primary care estate, and invest in new diagnostics and technology. As part of the plan, 40 new hospitals will be built across England over the next decade. Six of the hospital builds have approval to proceed and a further 21 new build projects – including our Trust’s hospitals at Charing Cross, Hammersmith and St Mary’s – will receive ‘seed funding’ to start their schemes.
