Statement in response to New Hospital Programme announcement
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting MP, made an announcement in the House of Commons on 20 January 2025 outlining the outcome of the review of the New Hospital Programme, including an updated timeline for existing schemes. St Mary’s, Charing Cross and Hammersmith hospitals have been included in the third wave, which would see building starting between 2035 and 2039.
Chief executive Professor Tim Orchard’s statement on the outcome of the Government’s review of the New Hospital Programme to the Board in Common of the North West London Acute Provider Collaborative, 21 January 2024:
What was announced and what does it mean?
- Yesterday, the Government announced the outcome of its review of the New Hospital Programme. We were told that, despite all three of our main hospital sites being in urgent need of redevelopment, we would now have to wait until 2035 to 2038 for construction to begin. This would mean no new hospitals until the early 2040s.
- We were also told that we would not receive funding to support further development of our schemes until after 2030, meaning the end of our latest redevelopment programme after years of work and millions of pounds of our own and central investment so far.
- The need for redevelopment has been accepted for well over 25 years. I was personally first involved in meetings about St Mary’s redevelopment when I first joined St Mary’s as a consultant in 2003. Everyone who visits our sites – especially St Mary’s, where the need is greatest – is shocked by the state of our estate, some of which is 180 years old.
- Successive governments have kicked the can down the road for far too long, leaving us with the task of running a group of major hospitals that have not been maintained.
- We are fortunate to have excellent clinicians and wider workforce who have been prepared to go the extra mile to compensate for our failing buildings. Our estates teams have frankly being working miracles to keep things going.
- But the ask - to continue in this way until the 2040s - is just too much. It is simply impossible.
- All three of our main sites (as well as the Western Eye Hospital which is due to be incorporated into one of our new developments) have major issues:
- St Mary’s – leaking theatres, flood, closed wards, subsidence, lack of capacity
- Charing Cross – power and light to theatres (including our robotic theatres) whole wings without water or heating for periods
- Hammersmith – flooding, limits of power and light
- Western Eye – had to be closed for 18 months for remedial fire safety works
- As problems are fixed, others emerge, and the scale and impact of the problems are increasing.
- Yet these hospitals provide care for over one million patients a year, including much of the specialist care for the whole of north west London. We run the busiest of the capital’s major trauma centres as well as specialist stroke and heart attack centres for our sector. With our academic partner Imperial College London, we also run over 1,000 clinical trials at year, contributing to research breakthroughs with national and global impact.
- Our ‘whack-a-mole’ approach to estates maintenance will simply stop working at some point. It is quite possible that more than one of our sites will go down at the same time. The consequences, not just for north west London but the whole of the capital’s health system, are stark.
So what do we do?
- You will have seen the statement we issued yesterday.
Statement in response to New Hospital Programme announcement:
Professor Tim Orchard, chief executive of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “This is devastating news for our communities, our staff and patients, and for the whole of the capital’s healthcare system.
“We understand that the Government’s New Hospital Programme must be affordable but the simple truth is that St Mary’s Hospital, in particular, will not last until the 2040s.
“We run London’s busiest major trauma centre and care for more than a million patients a year. We need to digest the detail of today’s announcement, but we have to find a way to progress our schemes more quickly. This includes exploring alternative funding approaches, leveraging the value of our land that will be surplus to requirements and the significant contribution of our life science partnerships to local and national economic growth.”
- We have a deep responsibility to our patients and local communities, and we will continue to do everything we can to provide the best possible care for everyone who needs us.
- We cannot, however, sit here and wait for 15 years to begin building hospitals that are already crumbling.
- We will look at the detail of yesterday’s announcement and what it means for our schemes. But, we know we have to progress redevelopment more quickly – and there are some very significant opportunities.
- St Mary’s, in particular, has some unique features which offer alternative ways forward:
- The current hospital has been developed piecemeal across a sprawling site in central London – we now have a practical plan, with widespread support, to build the new hospital on a much smaller footprint, freeing up significant land for other uses.
- Our existing partnership with Imperial College, Westminster City Council and 15 co-located life science, tech and data companies, under the banner of Paddington Life Sciences, will contribute £1.5 billion per annum to the UK economy if we are able to redevelop our site to allow its further expansion.
- The decades of attempted redevelopments has allowed us to explore every conceivable option for redevelopment, including looking at alternative sites multiple times. We know that our current scheme is the best option and is a viable one.
- We will explore all possible means of funding our redevelopments, working with our Paddington Life Science and other partners, as well as with Government. We will also continue to work with local councils and MPs, who we know share our deep disappointment, to pursue our wider case.
- First and foremost, we need to find a way to complete detailed design and achieve planning consent for St Mary’s hospital and the wider campus.
- We recognise that the scale of the needs and expected benefits of the St Mary's redevelopment means that it comes with a price tag to match. And it is clear that the New Hospital Programme has struggled most with the biggest of the redevelopment schemes, all of which have been placed in the last phase of the programme.
- But we all have a responsibility to address the very clear needs – and opportunities - I have summarised here. The consequences if we don’t are just too damaging to continue to kick our redevelopments further down the road.
Acknowledgements
- Before I finish, I just want to acknowledge the tremendous effort and skill of our redevelopment team, who have worked so hard over the past few years to establish a great plan for all of our sites. They are feeling devastated today, as I know is much of the rest of our workforce and our partners.
