There has been considerable coverage in the media in the past week around the New Hospital Programme (NHP).
We are making significant progress with our plans to build a new children’s hospital for the East of England, the only region in the UK without a specialist children’s hospital. Planning permission for the Hospital was awarded in March 2022.
Cambridge Children’s Hospital has never been funded through the New Hospital Programme and there are no current plans for Cambridge Children’s Hospital to join the NHP.
Our £100m of government funding was committed in 2018 under the Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships scheme and we are on track to meet our target of an additional £100m of philanthropy.
Cambridge Children’s Hospital will be the first to truly provide mental and physical health care together, delivered by staff who are trained in both. It will be a national exemplar, delivering a revolutionary model of healthcare and game-changing advances in life sciences research via an embedded research facility focused on detecting and preventing childhood illness.
Funding a project of this scale is challenging. Our first business case, the Strategic Outline Case, which was approved in 2020, gave an indicative cost for the Project. It also outlined additional costs that would have to be modelled in the later stages of the business case process as the full scope of the Project was developed.
Projected costs have therefore risen as expected, particularly as external factors have inevitably impacted on the projected cost, including high rates of inflation and high construction costs.
We are working closely with NHS England on finalising the costs and funding streams for this brand new hospital. Our Outline Business Case is scheduled for national review in September and continues to attract widespread regional support.
Our Outline Business Case was approved in principle in October 2023. Read the full story here.