A £60bn plan to rebuild NHS hospitals is slipping years behind schedule, with a new report from Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee finding that key schemes will not be completed until the mid-2040s and urgent safety replacements pushed beyond recommended deadlines.
Published on 22 April, the report reviews the New Hospital Programme (NHP) and finds that hospitals promised under a 2020 pledge will now be delivered far later than planned, with the final schemes not expected to open until 2045–46.
Originally billed as a plan to deliver 40 new hospitals by 2030, the programme has since been reset and expanded to 46 schemes with an estimated total cost of £60bn.
However, MPs warn that the revised timetable, while more realistic, carries “major implications” for patient safety, particularly for hospitals built using reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), a material linked to structural risk.
Seven RAAC hospitals, prioritised for replacement, are now not expected to be completed until 2032–33, up to three years later than the latest recommended safe deadline.
Maintaining these ageing buildings in the meantime is expected to cost around £1bn, as the NHS continues to rely on mitigation measures that reduce but do not eliminate risk.
The committee highlights that delays have already led to hundreds of millions of pounds being spent on temporary fixes, describing such reactive spending as poor value for money.
Beyond the immediate safety concerns, the report raises broader questions about whether the programme can be delivered as planned.
It warns there is “significant risk” of further slippage due to limited contingency, workforce shortages and the complexity of delivering multiple large-scale projects simultaneously.
Construction of hospitals using the programme’s standardised “Hospital 2.0” design is not due to begin until 2027–28, and any delays at this stage could have knock-on effects across the entire pipeline of projects.
The Department of Health and Social Care is also facing scrutiny over its capacity to manage what MPs say has the characteristics of a “mega-project”, including its scale, cost and centralised delivery model.
While the government argues that the reset has placed the programme on a more deliverable footing, the committee concludes that stronger oversight, clearer planning and improved capability will be critical to avoiding further delays.
“There is still a significant risk that this massive programme will fall further behind,” the MPs write in the report. “If the programme is unable to deliver these complex schemes on time, there could be knock-on effects to the entire programme because there is little contingency for delays and cost overruns in the next five years.