Cost of delay: repair bill at pushed back new hospitals could hit £6bn by time construction starts

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The total repair backlogs at the delayed new hospital sites could reach an estimated £5.7 billion, research by the Liberal Democrat has revealed. The Party has called for a ‘crumbling hospitals taskforce’ to help bring the delayed construction dates forward.

When looking at the average yearly increase in the repair backlog since the Programme was announced in 2019, the repair backlog at these sites has increased on average by 10.45% per year. 

If the repair backlog continues to increase at this average yearly rate across these hospitals it will reach £5.7 billion by the earliest construction dates in each phase of the delayed Programme (2032, 2035, 2037). That is up from the £2.1 billion it currently stands at, a rise of £3.5 billion.

High-risk backlogs at these sites are also estimated to grow significantly. These are cases where repairs must be addressed with urgent priority to prevent catastrophic failure, major disruption to clinical services or deficiencies in safety liable to cause serious injury or prosecution.

The high-risk backlog has increased at a yearly rate of 3.73% since 2019 across these sites and currently stands at £450 million. If these hospitals keep crumbling at the same pace up until the start of their construction dates, these high-risk repairs will cost a staggering £640 million to fix, a 43% increase.

The further the construction dates have been pushed back the greater the estimated additional cost to fix these hospitals will be. The four pushed back to 2035 could experience an estimated rise in cost of repairs of £1.29 billion, from £760 million to £2.05 billion across the next decade, with the high-risk backlog jumping up to £508 million from £294 million. 

The seven projects now expected to begin construction in 2037 could see the sharpest rise in their estimated repair bill, from £720 million to £2.4 billion - more than tripling.

Some of the delayed hospitals are already experiencing shocking and dangerous issues putting patient safety at risk. Torbay Hospital, one of the delayed projects and the third oldest hospital in the country with its foundation stone laid in 1925, has suffered from sewage leaks, water ingress and crumbling concrete. It has been found that 80% of the site is in poor or bad quality. 

In January 2024 all toilet facilities had to be closed as sewage was found to be leaking into the wards themselves. Torbay Hospital has also had to place crash decks at the base of one of the buildings to protect from crumbling concrete hitting the floor, costing the hospital over £1 million to mitigate defects from a building that is earmarked for demolition anyway. The hospital is also still using portacabins, installed in 1984, to house its laboratories. 

The Liberal Democrats are calling on the government to bring the delayed construction dates of the projects on the New Hospital Programme forward. The Party said that the government should create a ‘crumbling hospitals taskforce’ to protect patients from the deteriorating NHS estate and drive forward the New Hospital Programme.

Liberal Democrat Health and Social Care spokesperson, Helen Morgan MP said:

“Communities are being forced to put up with ramshackle hospital buildings, utterly unfit for purpose, for years longer than they were promised. It is a complete disgrace. 

“The Conservative Party should hang its head in shame for leading communities up the garden path, making promises to them they knew they never intended to keep. 

“But the Government’s lack of ambition is also shocking. It seems the government has embraced the false economy of dither and delay, accepting a managed decline of our NHS instead of rebuilding it into the envy of the world it once was.

“It is down to Ministers to change course and begin to deliver for patients. That means creating a new crumbling hospitals taskforce to work on bringing these construction dates forward and finally delivering what patients were promised.”

ENDS

Notes to Editors:

First reported in The Guardian.

The research by the Liberal Democrats can be found here.

Across the NHS estate as a whole, it was found last year that more than one in seven NHS buildings were older than the health service itself, founded in 1948. The cost for all the repairs on the NHS estate has also reached a new record high, now standing at £13.8 billion. It can be found here. The NHS England repair backlog of £13.8 billion can be found here.

Inside the battle to keep Torbay Hospital from crumbling.

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