Sarah Green urges Government to fund high-risk Buckinghamshire hospital repairs totalling £44 m

Chesham and Amersham MP Sarah Green has today called on the Government to provide urgent funding for NHS building repairs across Buckinghamshire. The call comes after House of Commons Library analysis found that the total cost to complete Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust’s “high-risk” infrastructure repairs is over £44 million. This means Buckinghamshire faces the ninth highest repair backlog costs of all Trusts in England. The NHS defines “high-risk” repairs as those which “must be addressed with urgent priority in order to prevent catastrophic failure, major disruption to clinical services or deficiencies in safety liable to cause serious injury or prosecution”. The total cost of tackling Buckinghamshire’s health infrastructure backlog comes to over £178 million. Nationally, this figure is £1.7 billion. However, under current Government plans mean repairs and long-promised new hospitals will further be delayed or cancelled as the health capital spending budget faces a significant real-terms cuts in two years’ time. Green said: “The extent of the NHS’s high-risk repair backlog in Buckinghamshire is deeply concerning. “It is the Government’s duty to ensure that staff and patients are safe in our National Health Service. “The Chancellor must urgently provide the funds necessary to carry out these repairs. His plan to cut the NHS’ capital spending budget in real terms in two years’ time is dangerous to NHS staff, dangerous to patients, and quite simply wrong.” ENDS Note to Editors Full data from the House of Commons Library broken down by trust is available here. Financial Times reporting the Government’s planned cuts to the NHS budget is here.

27th March 2023