Political round-up Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher Hospital programme criticism justified

Dorset Hospitals are in the limelight as a result of the report issued to Parliament on July 17 by the Comptroller and Auditor General criticising the Government’s New Hospital Programme.

Five hospital projects in Dorset were included in the programme which had been carried forward from the 2019 Health Infrastructure Plan in which the multiple sites across Dorset were treated as one project out of 27 such projects to be delivered across England by 2030.

The separation into different projects was designed to help fulfil the 2019 Conservative Party manifesto promise for 40 new hospitals across England. At the NHS England Board meeting on October 10, 2022, the five schemes for Dorset were set out in detail. One was ‘New build at Christchurch Hospital including a new Community Hub and associated facilities which in turn facilitates creation of a specialist palliative hospice’. The other Dorset schemes were for Dorset County, Royal Bournemouth, Poole and St Ann’s hospitals.

The description for the St Ann’s scheme was ‘New builds at St Ann’s to upgrade and consolidate specialist mental health facilities for local adults and children’.

Against this background it came as a great surprise that the progress report to Parliament on these schemes redefines the Christchurch Hospital scheme as ‘Enabling works, supporting a separately-funded rebuild of a hospice’.

It also describes the St Ann’s Hospital project as comprising two separate phases, one of which is a new child and adolescent mental health services psychiatric intensive care unit at Alumhurst Road. In a footnote, the National Audit Office reports that the New Hospital Programme intends to split the St Ann’s Hospital and Alumhurst Road scheme into two and the Christchurch Hospital scheme would then be merged into another scheme. By ‘de-scoping’ the Christchurch project and removing it from the programme and ‘re-scoping’ the St Ann’s project by splitting it into two, the total number of ‘new hospitals’ remains unaltered but at Christchurch’s expense.

The result is that the rebuild of the Macmillan Caring Locally Hospice at Christchurch is delayed. Even the production of plans, a necessary precursor to obtaining planning permission, is now on hold.

Having already raised more than £6million from local fundraising and legacies towards the capital cost of this project, the charity is faced with the prospect of building cost inflation devaluing those funds. Without planning permission, Macmillan Caring Locally is unable to secure those contributions from charitable donors which are conditional upon planning permission. As the NHS is the project manager for the rebuild, the much-loved local charity is unable to proceed on its own. One can see from this example that the National Audit Office is well justified in its criticisms of the New Hospital Programme.