Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was not included in the Great British Energy Solar project.

NHS England received an extremely positive response to this scheme, with over 300 bids (covering 140 trusts) that could potentially have been taken forward.

The Department worked closely with NHS England and our partners at Great British Energy to apply a rigorous evaluation process to this longlist. This included a thorough deliverability screening, value for money assessment, and final assurance process to ensure that all projects were focused on core estate (to ensure the expected lifetime of the building matched or exceeded that of the new assets), alongside careful verification of the funding, value for money, and delivery data provided by trusts.

Regrettably, this meant that many projects missed out despite offering significant value.