Fury at hitting Labor as huge £30bn. plan to build new hospitals to be postponed | United Kingdom | News

Labor is expected to delay plans to replace dilapidated NHS hospitals, promised by former prime minister Boris Johnson, because the government cannot find the funds.

Health Minister Wes Streeting is set to announce that at least half of the 40 new hospitals promised by the former Conservative government will not be built by the original 2030 deadline.

The announcement is expected next week and could see NHS trusts across the country scrambling to figure out how to fix their failing hospitals. According to The Guardianthe Health Secretary plans to blame the Conservatives for failing to budget for the £30bn project after March.

In September, Streeting said 12 out of 40 projects would go ahead, including seven which faced the risk of imminent collapse because they contain RAAC concrete. He also ordered a review of 25 others said to be in poor condition.

The Ministry of Finance, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England have also reviewed the project and where the money will come from. The costs to repair the dilapidated hospitals will now be spread over a longer time frame.

Street is expected to say the refurbishment will be ‘gradually’ and provide revised costs for the project. It is understood that many of the projects are already at an advanced stage and the hospital is in desperate need of a makeover.

The Health Secretary warned of possible delays in a letter to UK MPs in September. At the time, he said the government had “inherited a program that was unfunded beyond March 2025” and a wider financial sheet that was “hugely challenging”.

He wrote: “We may need to consider phasing schemes so that they can be taken forward as fiscal conditions allow. A structured and agreed rolling investment approach will mean that the continuation of these schemes will be subject to investment decisions in future spending reviews .”

But Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the risks associated with crumbling hospitals were so great that operating in them was “downright dangerous”.

Last year, Epsom and St. The Helier Trust in Surrey around 300 eye operations because the ventilation system in the operating theater broke down. Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex, also canceled 36 operations and closed two operating theaters for weeks due to malfunctions in air handling units, the Health Service Journal reported.

The Liberal Democrats said it was “completely unacceptable to drop the plans”. Helen Morgan, the party’s health and social care spokesman, said: “Patients in these communities have been told that these hospitals will save their local health services. To deny them what they were promised and the better care they deserve would be completely unacceptable.”