Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effect of delays to the modernisation of Royal Shrewsbury Hospital on patients; and if he will take steps to help ensure that patient views are taken account of in decisions for that project.

The Strategic Outline Case (SOC) on the reconfiguration of acute services across Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin has not been submitted to the Department as it did not pass the criteria review performed by NHS England and NHS Improvement. Written feedback on the SOC was issued to the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust on the 17 November 2021. The SOC is currently with the trust and is being amended. NHS England and NHS Improvement are expecting it to be resubmitted in the first quarter of 2022 and the Department will consider it once it is received. The Department continues to work to ensure that the decision made by the previous Secretary of State in 2019 is implemented.

The public, which includes patients, have already been consulted on these reconfigurations, and these consultations took place between May and September 2018.