Streeting revises timetable for New Hospital Programme with five schemes facing delay until 2039

The government has published a new timetable to deliver the New Hospital Programme, with some projects now pushed back beyond 2037 (see full list below).

Health secretary Wes Streeting yesterday described the new timetable as “honest, realistic [and] deliverable” in contrast to Boris Johnson’s original pledge to build 40 hospitals by 2030 which Streeting said was built on the “shaky foundation of false hope”.

Under the plan, which will see 46 hospitals built or refurbished, projects will be delivered and funded in five-year “waves”, with £15bn allocated for each wave. Five schemes now may not start construction until 2039, nine years after the original deadline set out by Johnson in 2020.

A total of 21 schemes have already been approved. Of these, 14 are either open to patients, in construction or have had their main build full business case approved, while a further seven will replace RAAC hospitals, which are deemed more urgent due to safety risks.

Of the 25 remaining, seven schemes are due to start construction in the upcoming wave of construction (2025 to 2030).

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A total of nine ”wave two” schemes will start between 2030 and 2035 and a further nine ”wave three” schemes between 2035 and 2039, with five of these not expected to start until 2037 at the earliest.

Streeting said: “The New Hospital Programme we inherited was unfunded and undeliverable. Not a single new hospital was built in the past five years, and there was no credible funding plan to build forty in the next five years.”

He added: ”Working closely with colleagues in HM Treasury,we have secured five-year waves of investment, ensuring that there is always a balanced portfolio of hospital schemes at different development stages being delivered now and into the future.

“This is the most efficient and cost-effective way of giving our NHS the buildings it needs, giving the construction sector the certainty it needs to deliver.”

The hospitals are being delivered using a standardised design, known as Hospital 2.0. The government said: “A hospital built through Hospital 2.0 principles will use sustainable and modern methods of construction designed for manufacturing assembly to accelerate the building process.”

Revised NHP Timetable