NHS backlog repair bill soars towards £14 billion
When The Lowdown first started in early 2019, the backlog maintenance bill for England’s NHS was estimated at £6 billion. By 2021, it had risen … Read more
Infrastructure problems
Labour manifesto pledge to build new hospitals
Almost casually, and with no real coverage in the mainstream national news media, the Labour Party has abandoned its previous … Read more
Thousands of pests found at English hospitals
The Guardian reports that thousands of pests including rats, cockroaches and bedbugs have been found at NHS hospitals in England. Hospital … Read more
Where is the money for crumbling hospitals?
Last week’s budget gave the NHS’s capital budget, used for infrastructure, a boost of £3.4 billion, but there is a … Read more
More confusion over new hospitals
Following on our recent Lowdown report on the chaos of the New Hospitals Programme (NHP), there are more signs that the organisation … Read more
New hospitals – the chaos continues
The prevailing aura of chronic, shambolic failure hangs over the government’s much-vaunted “New Hospitals Programme,” a brainchild of Boris Johnson, … Read more
NAO tries to make sense of New Hospitals Programme
The key Tory manifesto promise to build 40 new hospitals by 2030 was always implausible to all but the most … Read more
Problems mount for New Hospitals Programme
Concerns over the New Hospitals Programme (NHP) have been growing in recent months, since NHS Providers warned that it was on … Read more
Leamington ‘megalab’ faces closure
The Rosalind Franklin Laboratory in Leamington Spa, which opened in the summer of 2021 at a cost of up to £1billion and … Read more
To get NHS out of this hole – stop digging
In ten years from 2000 a decade of sustained investment by a New Labour government managed to repair much of the damage … Read more