Delays to repairs at ‘crumbling’ St Mary’s Hospital cast doubt on its long-term prospects
By Ben Lynch, Local Democracy Reporter
An NHS Trust has warned one of its hospitals ‘will not last’ until the 2040s after the Government announced repairs are not expected to start until 2035.
Professor Tim Orchard, chief executive of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, described the delays as ‘devastating news for our communities, our staff and patients, and for the whole of the capital’s healthcare system’.
Three Imperial hospitals, St Mary’s in Paddington, Charing Cross in Hammersmith, and Hammersmith in White City, are all included in the Government’s New Hospital Programme (NHP). The NHP was a 2019 Conservative election pledge promising to deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030.
In 2023, the National Audit Office warned the 2030 target was likely to be missed, and more hospitals have been added to the project over time. Labour gave the go-ahead to 21 schemes in September, work on some of which had already begun, and launched a review into the rest of the programme.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting on Monday announced that the original NHP was unaffordable in the short term and that funding would instead be released in waves.
Mr Streeting said upon taking office last year he was ‘shocked’ to find that the funding was not available for the NHP beyond March, describing it as ‘built on the shaky foundation of false hope’.
The three Imperial hospitals are all included in the fourth and final wave, for which construction is not expected to start until 2035 to 2038. A cost estimate for St Mary’s is listed as £2bn, with £1.5bn to £2bn each for Charing Cross and Hammersmith.
St Mary’s in particular has received widespread coverage for its crumbling infrastructure, with some of the buildings 180 years old. The Trust has estimated every six-month delay to the St Mary’s scheme would cost an additional £63-£73 million due to inflation, productivity and other impacts.
It currently prices the overall cost of works to the hospital as £2.5bn. Around £500m is expected to be offset by the value of the land which the Trust believes will become surplus to requirements.
Professor Orchard said: “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 the announcement, but we have to find a way to progress our schemes more quickly. This includes exploring alternative funding approaches and leveraging the value of our land that will be surplus to requirements.”
Professor Orchard says all three hospitals have major issues, from closed wards to flooding, and has highlighted the expected £1.5bn financial contribution St Mary’s is to make if the site is redeveloped.
According to data compiled by the BBC last year, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust had the largest high-risk repair backlog in England. It sat at £393m for 2022/23, roughly 20 per cent of the national total.
Pictured top: St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington (Picture: Google Street View)