From 40 hospitals to just six projects

On the first day of the Conservative party conference in Manchester, Matt Hancock announced that an extra £3bn to rebuild crumbling hospitals. Experts said this is welcome, but not nearly enough given the state of NHS infrastructure.

Boris Johnson declared that 40 new hospitals would be built, but very quickly it was discovered that almost all the money will go to just six NHS trusts, which each have a major hospital badly in need of rebuilding and have had plans waiting for approval. In addition, another 21 trusts will get a small amount of seed-funding to “kick-start” their plans for the end of the next decade.

The six trusts are Whipps Cross hospital, Epsom and St Helier trust, West Hertfordshire trust, Princess Alexandra Hospital trust, University Hospitals of Leicester trust and Leeds Teaching Hospitals trust.

Full story in The Guardian, 30 September 2019