Hospital Rebuild Plan
On Monday, November 30 Kettering General Hospital’s Trust Board met to progress plans for rebuilding the hospital site.
It looked at a shortlist of options to deliver a hospital rebuild and agreed a preferred option to take forward to the next stage of business planning.
The options were drawn together by a team of experts in the field and used an appraisal process was carried out in accordance with HM Treasure guidance.
The Board agreed to pursue a rebuild to the level of phase 3 of its five phase long term plan.
It noted:
-
So far Government funding of £396m has been provisionally allocated to the hospital’s rebuild - £46m for an Urgent Care Hub (new A&E) and £350m to be agreed from the Government’s Health Infrastructure Plan (HIP2) hospital rebuilding programme.
-
This means so far £396m is available for the rebuild so far - enough to fund the first phase of the hospital’s plan and part of the second
-
Achieving this would give the hospital a new Urgent Care Hub, some new wards and an energy centre.
-
But it would not enable the majority of the hospital’s wards to be renewed.
-
The preferred option put to the Board today was to seek additional funding to enable a second and third phase of the rebuild to be completed at a cost of an estimated £765m (this would include VAT and inflation costs).
-
The Board heard that achieving phase 3 is the minimum level considered adequate to provide new hospital facilities that the majority of patients and staff would benefit from.
-
Completing this phase would give the hospital enough money to replace its inpatient wards and bring other benefits including new operating theatres, relocating key departments and removing old estate that is no longer fit for purpose.
Achieving phase 3 would give the hospital three major new six-storey state-of-the-art buildings housing the Urgent Care Hub, new ward blocks, new operating theatres and improve accommodation for key services. It would bring more than 80 per cent of the hospital’s buildings up to modern standards - at the moment only 20 per cent of its buildings are up to standard.
The Board unanimously agreed to purse the option for a phase 3 rebuild and to redouble its efforts to secure funding for this with the support of local MPs, its Governing body and the local community.
The first business case will be submitted in March 2021 with others following in 2022 and 2023 with increasing levels of clinical and design details.
Over the next three to four months the Trust will now work-up and pursue funding for the first phase of development and will work with its local and national stakeholders to progress its plans.
The plan picture shows what the hospital could look like at phase 3. The four proposed new dark grey buildings marked with green symbols are the new Urgent Care Hub, ward blocks and energy centre. The other two grey buildings in the bottom of the diagram are the Foundation Wing and Treatment Centre – the only existing buildings which are currently up to modern standards on the hospital site.