MORE than £23m is needed to repair Barnsley Hospital - including almost £3m in ‘urgent’ work - new figures have revealed.
NHS England figures for the year to April suggest it would cost around £23.3m to fully repair all known maintenance issues at the Gawber Road site.
Across England, the total cost of eliminating all outstanding NHS maintenance issues was approximately £15.9bn, up 16 per cent on around £13.8bn last year.
The figures account for ‘backlog maintenance’, the estimated cost to restore a building to a certain state based on assessed risks.
It does not include planned maintenance work yet to happen.
These figures also only account for NHS providers of secondary care - including hospitals, mental health trusts and ambulances.
But Siva Anandaciva, director of policy, events and partnerships at The King’s Fund, warned GP practices are also ‘deteriorating’.
“These outdated practices risk undermining government’s ambitions to shift more care closer to the community,” he said.
“To develop a more preventative and community-based NHS, the government may need to focus any future growth in capital investment into the new neighbourhood health service, while being honest that more hospital estates may continue to go into managed decline in the meantime as a result.”
The data also reveals the cost of the most urgent ‘high risk’ repairs at Barnsley Hospital is around £2.8m.
A spokesperson for the hospital told the Chronicle: “We recognise the NHS England figures, which we submit each year as part of the national return.
“Barnsley Hospital continues to invest in developments, ward refurbishments and infrastructure upgrades, prioritising projects that enhance safety and the experience of patients and staff.
“This year, these have included such items as drainage replacements and upgrades, and oxygen tank replacements.
“Our backlog position is broadly in line with similar trusts, and our teams manage operational safety and maintenance on an ongoing basis to support safe, reliable care.”
A recent report by NHS Providers, which represents NHS services in England, said boosting investment in health infrastructure would benefit both the NHS, and the national economy.
Chief executive Daniel Elkeles said: “We can’t keep wasting eye-watering sums to prop up ageing buildings and equipment not fit for purpose.
“Critical parts of the NHS are falling to bits, literally.
“The safety of patients and staff is at risk from leaks, floods and other faults that cause operations and appointments to be postponed.
“We need to be able to spend more of the NHS budget on up-to-date facilities and technology to tackle the huge and growing repairs bill and to make the NHS as modern as possible.”
Nationally, it cost £14bn to run the NHS secondary care estate in the year to April.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said individual NHS organisations are legally responsible for maintaining their estates.
They added: “This government inherited a broken NHS, with the hospital estate left to crumble.
“We’re investing £3bn over five years for maintenance and repairs, with over £5bn specifically for the most critical cases, to make inroads into the backlog across the NHS estate.
“We will provide the investment and reform needed to get patients the care they deserve, in hospital buildings fit for purpose.”
