Basingstoke MP, Maria Miller, attended a Westminster Hall debate on the Government’s Hospital Building Programme, and was delighted to receive a commitment from the Health Minister to visit the preferred site for Basingstoke's new hospital.
Maria said, “Basingstoke hospital has served our community extremely well since the 1970s, but the buildings are reaching the end of their useful life. Those buildings were not built to last any longer. Furthermore, estimates show that the population that is served by the Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust will increase by around 23% between 2018 and 2050. We have grown extraordinarily as a town over that time, served by the same hospital. Our population is therefore rapidly ageing, with all the implications that brings for our health services. Our over-75s population in Hampshire will have increased by 35% between 2017 and 2024.
We are fortunate in Basingstoke that all the organisations involved in planning for the new hospital are working together in exemplary fashion, through an organisation that has been formed called Hampshire Together, which is all about modernising our hospitals and health services. That organisation firmly welcomed the Prime Minister’s announcements in October that all NHS trusts that receive seed funding to develop a business case for a new hospital project as part of phase 2 of the health infrastructure plan 2 programme, including Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, will be fully funded to deliver those by 2030.
The Trust was especially pleased to note that Hampshire Together had been earmarked for inclusion in first group of HIP2 projects due for completion. The Trust’s plans are well-developed with a preferred site, which the Minister already knows a little about, at junction 7 on the M3, which has been identified by the ambulance services as the best location to save more lives, providing acute care for hundreds of thousands of people living in the rapidly expanding communities in north and mid Hampshire.”
The Hospital Building Programme is the manifestation of the Government’s commitment to build 40 new hospitals by 2030, plus a further 8 which were committed to previously, and to upgrade more than 70 hospitals. Work will be progressed on these projects with £4.2 billion of Government funding. This is the biggest hospital building programme in a generation, helping to protect the NHS long into the future - delivering on this vital manifesto commitment.
