Health Secretary announces £2.7Bn for new hospitals

The Health and Social Care Secretary, Matt Hancock, announced a new programme for the construction of at least six new hospitals and improvements to over 20 more at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester last week.

This new programme, named the Health Infrastructure Plan, will allocated £2.8Bn worth of investment to six hospital trusts, for the express purpose of constructing new hospitals, as well as a further 21 trusts, for the simple purpose of refurbishments and upgrades.

Under the Health Infrastructure Plan the six hospital trusts building new hospitals, named as Barts Health Trust, Epsom and St Helier Trust, West Hertfordshire Trust, Princess Alexandra Hospital Trust, University Hospitals of Leicester Trust, and Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust, will receive £2.7Bn for their new hospitals.

Whereas the 21 other upgrade and improvement schemes will receive just £100M in funding for their respective projects, some of the scheme scheduled to receive this smaller amount of funding include Addenbrookes hospital in Cambridge, Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, and North Manchester General Hospital.

Overall, the Conservatives’ new plan sets out to build new hospitals, modernise the UK’s primary care estate, invest in new diagnostics and technology, and help eradicate critical safety issues in the NHS estate.

The aim of the programme is also to deliver the most demanding projects, the construction of the new hospitals specifically, by 2025 while the less demanding improvement work should be completed some time between 2025 and 2030.

This new plan, and new investment, follows the Conservative Government’s recent pledge to provide an extra £33.9Bn in funding per year to the NHS by 2023 to 2024, in addition to other pledges of £1.8Bn in capital funding for the express purpose of hospital upgrades and other critical infrastructure works for the NHS.

And finally, the government is also scheduled to announce a sum of £200M on Friday for the purchase of diagnostic machines which are hoped to improve the earlier diagnosis of terminal illnesses such as cancer.

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