St Mary’s Hospital ‘will not last’ until 2040 says NHS trust

A West London NHS Trust has warned that St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington “will not last” until the 2040s after the Government announced repairs are not expected to start until 2035.

Professor Tim Orchard, chief executive of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, described the delays as “devastating news for our communities, our staff and patients, and for the whole of the capital’s healthcare system”.

Three Imperial hospitals, St Mary’s in Paddington, Charing Cross in Hammersmith, and Hammersmith in White City, are all included in the Government’s New Hospital Programme (NHP). The NHP was a 2019 Conservative election pledge promising to deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030.

In 2023 the National Audit Office warned the 2030 target was likely to be missed, and more hospitals have been added to the project over time. Labour gave the go-ahead to 21 schemes in September, work on some of which had already begun, and launched a review into the rest of the programme.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting on Monday 20 January announced that the original NHP was unaffordable in the short term and that funding would instead be released in waves. “This is the most efficient and cost-effective way of giving our NHS the buildings it needs, giving the construction sector the certainty it needs to deliver,” he said. “We are backing this plan with investment which will increase up to £15bn over each consecutive five-year wave, averaging around £3bn a year from 2030.”

Streeting said upon taking office last year he was “shocked” to find that the funding was not available for the NHP beyond March, describing it as “built on the shaky foundation of false hope”.

“If I was shocked by the state of this programme, patients ought to be furious. Not only because the promises made to them were never going to be kept. They also desperately need new buildings and new hospitals.”

The three Imperial hospitals are all included in the fourth and final wave, for which construction is not expected to start until 2035 to 2038. A cost estimate for St Mary’s is listed as £2bn, and £1.5bn to £2bn each for Charing Cross and Hammersmith.

St Mary’s in particular has received widespread coverage for its crumbling infrastructure, with some of the buildings 180 years old. The Trust has estimated every six-month delay to the St Mary’s scheme would cost an additional £63mn to £73mn due to inflation, productivity and other impacts.

It currently prices the overall cost of works to the hospital as £2.5bn. Around £500mn is expected to be offset by the value of the land which the Trust believes will become surplus to requirements. The hospitals featured regularly in campaign literature ahead of the election last year, with candidates of differing political hues claiming they would push to ensure funding is secured.

Ben Coleman, Labour MP for Chelsea and Fulham, said that alongside the lack of funding or timetable for the NHP, the former Conservative Government had removed Charing Cross, St Mary’s and Hammersmith from the scheme. He added there remains an affordability issue, and that the Government “doesn’t have the money to move as fast as we all want them to”.

“This announcement is very disappointing for residents, patients and healthcare staff across West London. It is a bitter legacy of the Conservatives’ failure to stick up for our local hospitals and their lies about having secured the funding needed. As we face the scale of the problem head on, I will be challenging ministers to do more and will be working with the leadership team at Imperial to develop alternative funding approaches.”

Cllr Paul Swaddle, leader of the Conservative Group on Westminster City Council, said: “Labour has let us all down again, and then slipped the news out on a busy news day that included the US Presidential inauguration in the hope we wouldn’t notice.”

Professor Orchard said: “We understand that the Government’s New Hospital Programme must be affordable but the simple truth is that St Mary’s Hospital, in particular, will not last until the 2040s.

“We run London’s busiest major trauma centre and care for more than a million patients a year. We need to digest the detail of today’s announcement, but we have to find a way to progress our schemes more quickly. This includes exploring alternative funding approaches, leveraging the value of our land that will be surplus to requirements and the significant contribution of our life science partnerships to local and national economic growth.”

Orchard also spoke on the delays at this week’s North West London Acute Provider Collaborative Board in Common meeting. He said all three hospitals have major issues, from closed wards to flooding, and highlighted the expected £1.5bn financial contribution St Mary’s is to make if the site is redeveloped.

According to data compiled by the BBC last year, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust had the largest high-risk repair backlog in England. It sat at £393mn for 2022-2023, roughly 20 percent of the national total.

A total of 18 hospitals have been delayed to 2030 or later, with other London sites including Whipps Cross in Leytonstone and a new Specialist Emergency Care unit next to the existing St Helier Hospital in Sutton.

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