Major London hospitals could be forced to close after rebuilds delayed, ministers warned

MPs and senior NHS officials have warned that major London hospitals could be forced to close after ministers delayed plans to rebuild them.

Heath Secretary Wes Streeting on Monday postponed plans to build and refurb major hospitals under the New Hospitals Programme by up to a decade, sparking fury.

Among the major London hospitals facing delays for critical rebuilds include Charing Cross Hospital, St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington and Hammersmith Hospital, which won’t see work begin until 2035-2038, and St Helier in Sutton, which will not see work begin until at least 2032.

Trust executives told on Tuesday how their hospitals were already crumbling in a “whack-a-mole” game to keep facilities running, with some floors sinking with hospital beds on them and entire surgeries being hit with power and water outages.

MPs representing Sutton and Epsom, which St Helier serves, said the hospital’s existing facility “has reached the end of the line”.

Local MP Bobby Dean told the Standard: “The floor is sinking, the ceiling leaks, lifts regularly break, which means you can not transfer patients to the places in the building that they need to be in.

“Many parts of the hospital are far too hot to work in during the summer. Far too cold during the winter.

“There are floods that happen in parts of the building. There are bits of the building which are literally just being propped up with bits of tarpaulin and pieces of wood.

“Probably most critically the intensive care unit is not fitted out to modern-day standards when it comes to things like ventilation and space requirements. You might often have two or three patients where you are meant to have one for example.”

The Trust’s chief executive, Dr James Marsh, said patients had “been let down again”.

In a direct message to Mr Streeting, he added: “If the health secretary thinks we can continue to care for patients for 10 years in this building, we invite Wes Streeting to come and see the state of the estate himself.”

Imperial College NHS Trust boss, Professor Tim Orchard, which runs St Mary’s, Charing Cross, and Hammersmith, said they could not wait fifteen years as the Trust’s hospitals are already at risk of catastrophic failure.

Officials have already had to move some services out of St Mary’s Hospital to prevent it partly collapsing into nearby Paddington Station, he warned on Tuesday.

“In the last few months at St Mary's, we've had to close theatres for several weeks in order to repair leaks in the roof,” he said.

“We've had floods, they have a ward closed because the floor will not bear the weight of hospital beds.

“We have had to remove some specialist services from a building to repair subsidence that could have meant the corner of the building collapsing into Paddington Station, and we simply don't have enough capacity.

“At Charing Cross, we've lost the power and light to theatres, including our robotic theatres. Whole wings have been left without water on occasion and indeed heating.”

In a dramatic warning, he said it was “possible” that multiple hospital sites could “go down” due to the delayed repairs - adding: “At which point you have then basically trashed the ability to provide specialist care in north-west London.”

Whipps Cross Hospital in east London - which had been initially slated to be rebuilt in 2026 - will be delayed until 2032-2034 under Mr Streeting’s plans.

Shane DeGaris, the chief executive of Barts Health NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, said he was confused by the rationale behind the decision, as works have already begun.

He warned that patients and medics were going to have to put up with “really substandard” care for at least another five years.

Announcing the changes in the Commons on Monday, Mr Streeting said the new timetable was “honest, funded and can actually be delivered”.

He added: “It is a serious, credible plan to build the hospitals our NHS needs.”

Promising that all the new units would be delivered, Mr Streeting said he had secured investment averaging £3 billion a year, which he described as part of the largest capital investment in the NHS since the previous Labour government.