Northamptonshire's Kettering General Hospital rebuild won't be complete by 2030, says hospital boss
A hospital boss has confirmed that the rebuild of Kettering General Hospital (KGH) will not be complete by the previous Government's 2030 deadline as the funding programme remains in review.
In July 2024, Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced a ‘reset’ of the New Hospitals Programme leaving many sites across England that were promised millions of pounds to revitalise sites effectively in limbo.
The review is set to conclude this autumn, but despite the previous Government's pledge to fund and complete the rebuild it is currently not known what the timeframe will be.
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Polly Grimmett, Director of Strategy at the KGH NHS Foundation Trust, updated the North Northamptonshire Council (NNC) Health Scrutiny Committee on the hospital rebuild progress at a meeting held last night (Tuesday, September 10).
She told members: "It is worth noting that originally when the 40 new hospitals programme was announced the timeline for completing the schemes was 2030.
"I think I need to announce to this committee that Kettering, certainly not alone, in fact the vast majority of the schemes will not be complete by 2030.
"I can't give you a timeline on when we're expecting completion because that depends on the output of the national review.
"We are waiting to find out what impact, if any, that has on the timeline of our scheme and indeed on the budget that we'll be allocated. The Kettering Trust Board remains totally committed to those plans."
Whilst the review concludes, KGH has been given written confirmation to continue with its planning for the main scheme and for 'early enabling works' that will need to take place before the main section of the rebuild can start.
This includes installing new electrical infrastructure and building a new energy centre for the hospital, which is currently reliant on "very old" steam-based infrastructure.
The hospital boss also confirmed that works to support the RAAC roof in the Rockingham Wing and make it safe will be completed by the end of 2024, regardless of what comes out from the Government's hospital programme review. This will mean that maternity services will be able to move back into the wing as the works will give the building a lifespan of ten years.
When asked what will happen if the Government review decides to retract funding, Ms Grimmett replied: "There is of course a risk that that funding won't materialise. It's really important that Kettering hospital has a plan- we have a plan.
"There are other things we are also working on in terms of looking at what services don't need to be on an acute hospital site anymore as medical advancements happen.
"For example, that's why we're building community diagnostic centres, we also know some day case services don't necessarily need to be on acute hospital sites, some outpatient services don't need to.
"We're continually working through contingency plans and working with other health and care partners to look at what else we could do to mitigate against that funding not coming through.
"I think it's clear to anybody who uses the site that there are many buildings that are beyond the lifecycle that we would want to be treating patients in.
"That is absolutely our priority to replace those areas of the estate and make sure that the services that are currently provided out of there get to new homes."
The meeting also confirmed that work on the new community diagnostics centre to open on the Corby Willowbrook site will be completed in 2025. The facility will provide MRI and X-ray facilities so patients do not need to travel to the main hospital site.