Fury to hit Labour as huge £30bn plan to build new hospitals to be postponed

Health curate Wes Streeting is expected to denote delays successful gathering caller hospitals (Image: Getty)

Labour is expected to postpone plans to regenerate decaying NHS hospitals promised by erstwhile Prime Minister Boris Johnson due to the fact that the authorities can't find the funds.

Health curate Wes Streeting is acceptable to denote astatine slightest fractional of the 40 caller hospitals promised by the erstwhile Conservative authorities won't beryllium built by the archetypal deadline of 2030.

The announcement is expected adjacent week and could spot NHS trusts crossed the state scramble to fig however to hole their failing hospitals. According to The Guardian, the wellness curate is readying to blasted the Conservatives for failing to fund for the £30bn task beyond March.

In September, Streeting said 12 of 40 projects would spell ahead, including 7 which faced the hazard of imminent illness due to the fact that they incorporate RAAC concrete. He besides ordered a reappraisal of 25 others, which are said to beryllium successful a mediocre state.

The Treasury, Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and NHS England person besides reviewed the task and wherever the wealth volition travel from. The outgo of repairing the decrepit hospitals volition present beryllium dispersed implicit a longer clip frame.

Street is expected to accidental the refurbs volition hap 'eventually' and supply revised costing for the project. It is understood galore of the projects are already astatine an precocious signifier and the infirmary successful hopeless request of a makeover.

The wellness curate warned of imaginable delays successful a missive to English MPs successful September. At the time, helium said the Government had "inhereted a programme that was unfunded beyond March 2025" and a wider fiscal expanse that was "hugely challening".

He wrote: "We whitethorn person to see rephasing schemes truthful that they tin beryllium taken guardant arsenic fiscal conditions allow. A structured and agreed rolling concern attack volition mean proceeding with these schemes volition beryllium taxable to concern decisions astatine aboriginal spending reviews."

But Matthew Taylor, main enforcement of the NHS Confederation, said the risks associated with crumbling hospitals are truthful large that it was "outright dangerous" to run successful them.

Last year, Epsom and St Helier spot successful Surrey cancelled astir 300 oculus operations due to the fact that the ventilation strategy successful the operating theatre broke down. The Princess Alexandra infirmary successful Harlow, Essex, besides cancelled 36 operations and closed 2 operating theatres for weeks owed to aerial handling units failing, the Health Service Journal reported.

The Liberal Democrats said ditching the plans was "completely unacceptable”. Helen Morgan, the party’s wellness and societal attraction spokesperson said: "Patients successful these communities person been told that these hospitals volition rescue their section wellness services. To contradict them what they were promised and the amended attraction that they merit would beryllium wholly unacceptable."