Leighton Hospital Rebuild

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Carolyn Harris (in the Chair)]

I will call Dr Kieran Mullan to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the rebuild of Leighton Hospital.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. My aim today is to take this opportunity to ensure that the rebuild of Leighton Hospital is front and centre of the Minister’s priorities, because a successful rebuild and management of the short-term challenges on the way there are vital to ensuring that my constituents, and residents across the region more broadly, can access excellent healthcare from their local hospital.

All of us involved in the campaign were delighted when we secured Leighton’s place in the £20 billion new hospital programme, which will see 40 hospitals benefit in the largest concerted effort in a generation to modernise our hospital estate. As part of that, Leighton Hospital will receive hundreds of millions of pounds in funding to be rebuilt. The current hospital is a crucial part of our local healthcare services. Built in the early 1970s, Leighton Hospital was opened by the late Queen in 1972. Generations of families have been born there and millions of people have received treatment there, and I know our local community is incredibly proud of its local hospital. Each year, the Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, of which Leighton is the primary site, has more than 100,000 A&E attendances and 290,000 outpatient appointments, and carries out more than 100,000 diagnostic tests. Leighton provides not just healthcare, but over 4,500 job opportunities to members of staff employed at the trust. Those fantastic members of staff cover a whole range of roles, including porters, cooks, receptionists, cleaners, occupational therapists, healthcare assistants, physiotherapists, nurses, doctors and many others.

Having worked in the NHS prior to becoming an MP, I know the difficulties that can arise working in buildings that are in need of refurbishment or, in this case, replacement. The physical infrastructure of the building being worked in is outside the control of the frontline staff, and they often have to do whatever it takes to make it work, but it would be better if they did not have to. Since it was built, Leighton has been expanded with new, modern buildings added on, including a new intensive therapy unit and theatre suite, campaigned for by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) when he represented Crewe and Nantwich.

More recently, I worked with others to secure £15 million for a new A&E department. When it was originally built, much of the building was made with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. RAAC is a lightweight, bubbly form of concrete, which was often used in schools, colleges and hospitals from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. It is usually found in roofs and occasionally walls and floors, and has since proven to be at risk of structural failure. Since that came to light, it was clear that something needed to be done to ensure that Leighton remains safe for patients.

By the time we started our campaign for a new hospital building, much work had already been done to manage that risk, but it was clear that remedial work would only take us so far and that the best thing to do—not least the better use of taxpayers’ money—was to have a whole new building, so the campaign was launched. Thousands of local residents signed our petition for a rebuild and shared their positive experiences of being treated at Leighton, often having been born there, and they very much wanted to see its future secured. The inclusion of Leighton Hospital in the hospital building programme is a win for its staff and the patients it serves. It has been a privilege to have played a part in securing it, alongside the hard work of so many other key players, including my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Eddisbury, and the cross-party support we achieved.

My hon. and learned Friend very much wanted to be here today, but is on an important visit with the Justice Committee. As I know he has done already, I have been glad today to be able to sit down and discuss this important local issue with the excellent Chester South and Eddisbury Conservative candidate for the forthcoming general election, Aphra Brandreth, who is in the Gallery. I know Aphra will continue championing the cause if she is elected as the next MP, which I very much hope she will be.

Having spoken recently with the leadership at Leighton Hospital, I understand that the building programme is coming along well, and I want to thank all those working on the project at Leighton, in NHS England and in the Department of Health and Social Care for their hard work to date. I am delighted that the Leighton site has been selected as the national low-rise hospital 2.0 design template reference site. Procurement of technical advisers is ongoing, and there has been positive engagement with the Cheshire East planning department. The funding allocated for the purchase of the land required to enable a new build has been received, with the purchase expected to be made in the next few weeks. While the trust is waiting for full DHSC and Treasury approval, the current timeline for completion runs through to 2029. That achieves the Government’s goal of ensuring that the proposed projects in the hospital building programme are done before 2030.

However, as with any large infrastructure project, there will always be challenges and room for improvement. Most critically, the RAAC issue has not gone away. The hospital building programme is the long-term solution and we intend to have a whole new hospital to deal with the issue, but in the meantime, remedial works are absolutely necessary to ensure the continued safety of the building.

These challenges can be expected to persist for the next six to seven years. There has been encouraging support to manage them to date, with over £55 million spent in 2022-23 and £28 million in 2023-24, with further spending likely to be needed in the next financial year. A wide range of work has been undertaken, including the construction of a two-storey modular decant ward building. The development provides decant accommodation, which in turn has allowed the trust to undertake essential RAAC refurbishment and stabilisation works to existing wards, ensuring patient safety.

However, the remedial works inevitably create challenges for the dedicated team of staff. Access routes and clinical areas sometimes need to be closed, forcing staff to make large detours and creating a negative impact on the patient and staff experience. It can be difficult to deliver business as usual. Although I appreciate that disruption is at times unavoidable, it would greatly assist the trust if the Minister could talk to colleagues in DHSC and the local NHS to agree a clear, forward-looking timetable for the RAAC work, which will need to carry on and progress as the rebuild does. If there are elements that cannot be agreed in advance, perhaps there could be a smoother mechanism for sign-off to allow more timely decisions to be made.

My second ask is for the Minister to use his considerable skill to work with officials and agree the full cost envelopes and timescales for the whole rebuild as soon as possible, and agree a more streamlined approval process for the elements that are tentatively agreed locally but need sign-off higher up as the work progresses. His attention will benefit the rebuild process not only in Leighton but in other areas if changes can be agreed and implemented across the programme. I am confident that a deep dive by the Minister to understand how it has all been working to date would help identify where improvements in the process could be made.

While I have the Minister’s attention, I want to highlight the potential for Leighton and other NHS hospitals to be heated by deep geothermal resources. A recent study by the British Geological Society identified more than 100 hospitals that sit on deep geothermal resources. As the Minister knows, with a net zero target of 2040, the NHS and hospitals in particular face a considerable challenge to secure net zero heat. I have been working with the Carbon and Energy Fund to develop proposals for identifying the best public sector candidates for deep geothermal, with a focus on NHS sites. I was glad to have the opportunity to meet the Hospitals Minister from the other place, Lord Markham, and his team. We are continuing discussions with them, the Treasury and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to see what we might be able to achieve.

I conclude by again paying tribute to all those who were part of the campaign to secure a rebuild of Leighton Hospital, and to all those at the hospital and in the wider NHS who put in an enormous amount of work to secure the progress we have made to date. I know that the Minister will take my questions in the spirit in which they are intended—as positive suggestions as to how we might deliver even more efficient progress—and see what he can do. We remain very happy to have secured the rebuild. We just want to ensure that it is delivered as swiftly as possible, and that Leighton staff and patients are supported to keep on delivering and receiving healthcare within the existing building in the meantime.