Trust CEO describes ‘once in-a-lifetime opportunity’

The plans to deliver 48 new hospitals across England by the end of the decade, and the wider strategic objectives of the New Hospital Programme, were discussed at a webinar held by Public Policy Projects on 6 July. As HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports, Natalie Forrest, Senior responsible officer, New Hospital Programme, at the Department of Health and Social Care, and Craig McWilliam, Programme director, Hospital Building Programme and Capacity Delivery Director at NHSE/I, focused on the Programme’s progress, objectives, and aims, before Lance McCarthy, CEO of the Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust in Essex, described plans for what he hoped – on its completion as one of the Programme’s ‘front-runners’ – will be ‘the UK’s most technologically advanced and digitally equipped new hospital’, in Harlow

Entitled ‘Building the hospitals of the future’, the webinar was hosted by former Minister of State for Health at the Department of Health and Social Care, and MP for Wimbledon, Stephen Hammond, who is today deputy Chair, National Infrastructure, at Public Policy Projects – a subscription-based global public policy institute. The former Minister explained that in addition to focusing on the New Hospital Programme, the webinar – one of PPP’s Health and Care Estates series – would also touch on the reconfiguration of the wider healthcare estate across England, and some of the challenges that ‘digitalisation’ and the post-pandemic world would present. He then briefly introduced the day’s three speakers.

The first to present, Natalie Forest, who, prior to her recent appointment to lead the New Hospital Programme, was CEO at Chase Farm Hospital (HEJ – February 2021), explained that she and Craig McWilliam would give ‘some of the highlights’ of the Programme, and outline its main objectives, putting into context some of what Lance McCarthy would  discuss on the reality of being part of the Programme, with plans already well advanced for a new Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow. The New Hospital Programme had, she explained, been a Government manifesto commitment made in October 2020, under which 40 new hospitals would be built by NHS Trusts across England, either as part of the HIP 1 programme (there were eight such organisations), or among a further 32 identified subsequently. She said: “In fact it’s going to be 48 new hospitals, because in the coming weeks the new Secretary of State will announce a process for choosing the next eight.” All of the hospitals would, she said, ‘be very familiar to the audience as having big backlog maintenance issues’; some had ‘an incredible history’ across communities – and may have been workhouses or other ‘re-purposed’ buildings, while others were originally built for healthcare, but had developed to having ‘multiple little huts and sheds and extensions built’, in such a way that their hospital site was now ‘incredibly inefficient’.