Snail’s tempo on NHS guarantees a threat for PM – with bosses not ‘sure’ hospitals with RAAC are secure

As the concrete disaster spreads to our courts and prisons, the parliamentary Public Accounts choose committee put NHS officers and a senior civil servant by means of their paces to make clear precisely what’s being performed to make sure hospitals throughout the nation are secure.

A programme to cope with strengthened autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) in hospitals was put in place in 2019 however since RAAC in schools has dominated the headlines, hospital trusts have been checking once more for the crumbly concrete of their buildings.

When requested by the committee what the timeline was for the eradication of RAAC in hospitals, NHS England CFO and deputy CEO, Julian Kelly, could not verify a particular deadline.

He mentioned: “There has been a commitment to eradicate them all by 2035.”

But he went on to say: “We have not done those full structural surveys to properly identify the total scale and level of the issue.”

Until these full surveys are accomplished – anticipated to be in a matter of weeks – neither the NHS nor the federal government might be positive how lengthy it should take to take away RAAC from hospitals or how a lot it should price the taxpayer.

Clearly pissed off by an absence of funding within the refurbishment of the nation’s substandard hospital buildings, Mr Kelly advised the committee: “We have examples all the time where hospitals are having to shut units, decant patients into other spaces where we are losing theatres, which limits our capacity to treat patients.

“This is going on day in and time out and it is why we are going to proceed to make the case for elevated funding in backlog upkeep.”

When Shona Dunn, permanent secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care, was asked directly if it was safe for hospitals with RAAC to remain open, her response was: “You can by no means be 100% sure.”

The committee appeared sceptical that the so-called cautious method we now have seen from the Department for Education was being utilized with the identical zeal to hospital settings.

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The committee additionally grilled the panel on the flagship coverage introduced beneath Boris Johnson to build 40 new hospitals by 2030.

According to a report from the National Audit Office, the variety of hospitals prone to be constructed by 2030 is in truth solely 32, and Mark Francois – a member of the committee and a Tory backbencher – appeared unconvinced by the panel’s solutions on the gradual progress of the undertaking.

Mr Francois requested: “In three years you’ve built one and you’re now telling us you’re going to build all the other 39 within seven years. Because on your progress to date, you’re not going to get anywhere near it are you?”

He went on to accuse Shona Dunn and her division of “playing a game of smoke and mirrors” with the figures, suggesting the committee was being taken for a journey.

The Labour chair of the committee, Dame Meg Hillier, ended the session by warning towards repeating the errors of the previous.

She mentioned standardisation throughout the new hospital constructing programme should not be allowed to reflect the standardisation of the usage of RAAC within the development of public buildings between the Sixties and the Nineties.

But with snail’s tempo progress on the Tory promise to construct 40 new hospitals, NHS ready lists and A&E ready instances persistently excessive, and strikes persevering with to cripple the well being service, Rishi Sunak will have to be seen to be making headway someplace on what has been branded the UK’s nationwide faith – or he dangers voters dropping religion altogether.