New Hospital Programme timetable slips again as trusts wait on capital allocations

Trust leaders have been told to expect further delays to the New Hospital Programme after the Department of Health and Social Care confirmed a revised sequencing of schemes across the next two spending periods.

Boards in the North West and the East of England say the change leaves them managing clinical risk in buildings that were already scheduled for replacement. Several trusts are now writing fresh business cases for interim works that were never intended to be funded twice.

Finance directors point out that the cost of keeping failing estate open is rarely counted against the programme. Backlog maintenance across the service has continued to rise, and a growing share of it is classed as high or significant risk.

The department says the revised timetable protects value for money and allows standardised hospital designs to be used at scale. Trusts affected by the change have been offered support to refresh their capital planning assumptions.