Select Committee · Public Accounts Committee

New Hospital Programme

Status: Closed Opened: 20 Jul 2023 Closed: 8 Mar 2024 1 recommendation 41 conclusions 1 report

The New Hospital Programme was set up in 2020 to build 40 new hospitals in England by 2030. It has £3.7 billion in capital funding for this for up to March 2025, with more to be provided for the following five years. The Programme is also intended to transform how NHS healthcare infrastructure is built, …

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Reports

1 report
Title HC No. Published Items Response
First Report - The New Hospital Programme HC 77 17 Nov 2023 42 Responded

Recommendations & Conclusions

5 items
4 Conclusion First Report - The New Hospital Program… Rejected

Start construction by 2024 on an early scheme piloting standardised hospital design.

DHSC must quickly complete and test its standardised hospital design to avert further delays to hospital construction, and to reduce the current high risk of cost and quality issues in years to come. DHSC has taken too long to get its Hospital 2.0 design off the drawing board. It continues …

Government response. The government rejects the recommendation to start construction of a standardised hospital design scheme in 2024, stating that starting construction without sufficient design maturity risks increased time and cost.
HM Treasury
11 Conclusion First Report - The New Hospital Program… Rejected

New Hospital Programme's cost and time saving estimates for standard design are very ambitious.

DHSC aims to improve the cost-effectiveness and quality of new hospitals by standardising hospital design, including the business case process, and making increased use of modern methods of construction.19 Many traditional hospital construction schemes suffered from cost overruns and delays, which the NHP team believes it can reduce through a …

Government response. The government disagrees with the committee's implicit recommendation, reaffirming its commitment to test Hospital 2.0, its standardised approach, starting with RAAC schemes, while undertaking deep dive reviews and developing prototyping facilities from late 2024.
HM Treasury
12 Conclusion First Report - The New Hospital Program… Rejected

NHP's Hospital 2.0 standard design development is significantly behind schedule, now expected May 2024.

In practice, these future time and cost savings also need to be set against the time and cost taken to develop the new approach and additional costs as a result of inflation while schemes wait to proceed. The Infrastructure and Projects Authority recommended that the NHP team should complete its …

Government response. The government disagrees with the committee's implicit recommendation regarding delays, stating it will test Hospital 2.0 with RAAC schemes, acknowledging construction is unlikely to start in 2024 but highlighting ongoing design and prototyping work for late 2024.
HM Treasury
14 Conclusion First Report - The New Hospital Program… Rejected

DHSC remains reluctant to conduct rigorous real-life testing of the Hospital 2.0 design.

More generally, we asked DHSC whether it should commit to first building one hospital according to Hospital 2.0 designs in order to discover its viability in practice, the true scope for cost and time savings, and problems and snags that could be removed, before the design is repeated across multiple …

Government response. The government disagrees with the recommendation for a single pilot hospital, stating it will test Hospital 2.0 within RAAC schemes and further develop designs through established prototyping facilities from late 2024, prior to construction.
HM Treasury
15 Conclusion First Report - The New Hospital Program… Rejected

Require the New Hospital Programme to conduct comprehensive live clinical testing of Hospital 2.0 designs.

Before the evidence session, we visited a “super hospital” project in Denmark. The Danes had built a prototype of a new operating theatre on the edge of an existing hospital and each surgical team was given access to it so they could test how it worked in practice. Using the …

Government response. The government disagrees with the recommendation for similar live clinical exercises, stating it will test Hospital 2.0 within RAAC schemes and use prototyping facilities from late 2024 to engage clinicians and manufacturers in improving designs and aiding training.
HM Treasury

Oral evidence sessions

1 session
Date Witnesses
7 Sep 2023 Amanda Pritchard · NHS England, Julian Kelly · NHS England, Natalie Forrest · Department of Health and Social Care, Professor Sir Stephen Powis · NHS England, Shona Dunn · Home Office View ↗

Correspondence

2 letters
DateDirectionTitle
26 Feb 2024 Correspondence from Shona Dunn, Second Permanent Secretary, Department of Healt…
16 Oct 2023 Correspondence from Shona Dunn, Second Permanent Secretary, Department for Heal…