Go-ahead for new wave of PFI projects

The new facilities, which include hundreds of single rooms, will offer more private and personal care to patients living in areas up and down the country, from Salford to South Devon. Up to half of the beds at the new hospitals will be in single rooms, in a shift away from large, public wards to more private and personal accommodation.

The Trusts and projects receiving the go-ahead are as follows:

University Hospital North Staffordshire NHS Trust – £272 million scheme to build a new community hospital and cancer centre.

Tameside and Glossop Acute Services NHS Trust – £68 million investment in three day-case operating theatres, new surgical wards and a 30 place day hospital for elderly mental health patients.

Salford Royal Hospitals NHS Trust – £112 million new hospital with more single rooms, an enhanced A&E department and three new operating theatres.

Walsall Hospitals NHS Trust – £140 million for the complete redevelopment of the Manor Hospital site.

South Devon Healthcare NHS Trust – £163 million re-development of Torbay Hospital with diagnostic centre offering MRI scans, more single rooms and day-case operating theatres.

University Hospitals Leicester NHS Trust – £711 million for new and refurbished buildings including a brand new women’s hospital and a stand-alone children’s hospital to be created at the Leicester Royal Infirmary.

The go-ahead for the six new hospitals follows a Department of Health review to check that all the schemes were locally affordable.

The first new hospital buildings are expected to open from 2010.

The multi-million pound developments will bring the combined investment in new hospitals to more than £10 billion since 1997 once the six schemes reach financial close. A total of 76 schemes (58 PFI and 18 public capital) are already built and open, with another 30 under construction.

The six new hospital schemes are just the latest in a number of new NHS facilities to take key steps towards opening. The £1 billion Barts and the Royal London private finance initiative (PFI) scheme – the biggest ever – approved in March, and in June the Department of Health gave approval for University Hospitals Birmingham Foundation NHS Trust and St Helens and Knowsley Hospitals NHS Trust to proceed with their PFI schemes.

In July, the Department of Health announced a £750 million investment in a new generation of community hospitals offering patients more blood tests, X-rays and minor operations outside large hospitals.