Imperial hospitals face £650m repair bill
The three hospitals with the biggest urgent repair bills are all part of the Imperial College Trust
Three west London hospitals run by the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust are the most urgently in need of repair in the country. Charing Cross (which is the hospital with the highest urgent repair bill of £312m) in Hammersmith, St. Mary’s in Paddington and Hammersmith Hospital are facing total costs of about £650m for high-risk and significant-risk repairs.
Speaking to The Sunday Times, a spokesperson for the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust responded: “Our staff are still managing to provide very advanced care in buildings that are simply not fit for purpose.”
In September 2018, problems with the lifts at St Mary’s Hospital, which is facing the second highest repair bill of £229m and is the hospital at which the Duchess of Cambridge had her three children, affected its maternity services and forced women hoping to give birth at the hospital to make alternative arrangements.
This revelation comes following an investigation by The Sunday Times into the 102% increase over the last three years in the total sum needed to eradicate the NHS maintenance backlog of “high-risk” and “significant-risk” problems. This figure now stands at over £3bn and has left an "alarming" hospitals are "falling apart".
Urgent repair bills include high and significant risk issues. Significant risk repairs are those that “require priority management” and “risk healthcare delivery or safety”. The NHS defines high-risk repairs as those that “must be addressed with urgent priority in order to prevent catastrophic failure, major disruption to clinical services or deficiencies in safety liable to cause serious injury and/or prosecution.
