Billions of pounds are needed to make the UK’s National Health Service buildings safe, with figures showing the cost of tackling the maintenance backlog has risen 8.4 per cent to £6.5bn.
More than half the sum, £3.4bn, is needed to sort out issues that present a high or significant risk to patients and staff, according to the official data published on Thursday.
Each year the organisations that provide hospital, mental health, community and ambulance services, survey their estate and estimate the costs of restoring buildings and equipment to required standards.
Data from the 2018/19 Estates Return Information Collection (ERIC) showed that the total cost of tackling the backlog of maintenance issues in NHS trusts rose by 8.4 per cent in the year to the end of March 2019.
Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at the King’s Fund think-tank, which analysed the figures, said years of under-investment in NHS capital budgets had left patients and staff in some parts of the NHS struggling to work with faulty equipment in buildings “that are in some cases literally falling apart around them”.
“We are not talking about shabby carpets or running down a building when it is scheduled for closure, but instead about facilities and equipment that are so outdated or dilapidated they no longer comply with statutory safety standards,” Mr Anandaciva added.
In August, after prime minister Boris Johnson declared the NHS his principal domestic priority, the government announced an additional £1.8bn for urgent repairs during the current financial year and 20 hospital upgrades. At the Conservative party conference in September, Mr Johnson announced what he touted as the biggest hospital building programme for a generation, with an initial £2.7bn for six schemes by 2025.
However Mr Anandaciva said the latest figures showed more funding was urgently needed. A multiyear capital settlement has been promised by the health department but the timing remains unclear.
He said that one director of an NHS trust had described to him broken gutters in his hospital that led to water seeping through the walls during heavy rain. This happened so frequently that nurses now gave “water updates” in their shift handovers, so colleagues would know when they would have to start unplugging electrical equipment, including incubators for newborn babies.
Another chief executive had reported that her radiographers were sometimes working with equipment older than they were, he added.
NHS Providers, which represents hospital, mental health, community and ambulance services, highlighted a 25 per cent increase in “clinical service incidents” over the past year, shown in the ERIC data. While acknowledging the definition of such incidents had been broadened this year, the organisation said the rise reflected “what trusts are telling us about how estate issues can have a direct impact on patient care and safety”.
In one example a serious power failure at a trust led to the closure of almost all clinical services for eight hours. As a result 1,788 outpatient appointments and 99 elective procedures had to be cancelled.
Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive, described the figures as “deeply disturbing”.
“We will need a multiyear settlement on capital that brings spending into line with other comparable economies, together with a better way of ensuring the money gets to where it’s needed most,” she added.
