Chancellor Rachel Reeves is set to announce she will pause a range of infrastructure projects including the Whipps Cross rebuild in order to plug a £20billion ‘black hole’, reports Marco Marcelline
Plans to rebuild Whipps Cross Hospital have been thrown into jeopardy after the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves revealed a £20billion “black hole” in government finances.
According to reports, in a speech to parliament this afternoon (3.30pm), she is expected to pause former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan to build 40 hospitals (including the new Whipps Cross) alongside a number of other infrastructure projects.
The news comes shortly after the health secretary, Wes Streeting, said it was “painfully clear” that the £20bn Conservative launched “hospitals programme” would not be completed by 2030.
Announcing a review into the hospitals programme, he told parliament last week: “I want to see the new hospital programme completed but I am not prepared to offer people false hope about how soon they will benefit from the facilities they deserve.”
Prior to the July 4th election, Labour committed to rebuilding Whipps Cross as well as five other London hospitals.
At the time, Streeting said: “Rishi Sunak failed to keep his promises to cut waiting lists or build a single new hospital. Given another five years in charge, he’ll fail again and waiting lists will hit 10 million.”
The troubled rebuild project was hit by a further setback back in May when Barts Health NHS Trust, which manages Whipps Cross, said its 2030 construction deadline was “highly unlikely” to be met.
A representative from the trust said in a report, published on 1st May: “It is too soon to predict, with precision, a set of updated milestone assumptions for the Whipps Cross programme.
“However, further delays now mean that our previous assumptions, of beginning construction on the new hospital in 2025 and completing it before the end of the decade, are now highly unlikely.”
Activists have been campaigning for a rebuild that adequately meets the needs of local residents for years. Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) in May, Mary Burnett, a spokesperson for the Action 4 Whipps campaign group, said the delay was due to poor levels of funding.
She said: “The latest delay is a direct result of the failure to properly fund Boris Johnson’s so-called ‘40 new hospitals’.
“The risks are high that, when finally built, Whipps Cross won’t have enough beds or a rebuilt Margaret Centre [end-of-life unit].
“Last year, the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee – independent, highly respected scrutiny bodies – exposed the funding fiasco, and raised concerns that the hospital will be too small for what we all need.”
The first phase of the rebuild has already started, with Integrated Health Projects (IHP), a joint venture between Vinci and Sir Robert McAlpine announced in November as the preferred contractor for the construction of a 500-space car park building designed by Ryder Architecture.
According to Barts Health, construction of the two new multi-storey car parks began this month and is due to be completed in August 2025.
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