Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much funding has been allocated from the public purse to the rebuilding of Derriford Hospital, Plymouth.

As announced on 30 September £100 million of seed funding has been made available to support 21 major projects covering 34 hospitals, to commence their development of schemes to be delivered in a second phase of major hospital rebuilds (HIP2), one of which is the Derriford Hospital scheme.

This £100 million of seed funding will be provided as capital and will mainly be for enabling project teams, specialist advisers and site surveys.

The funding will be drawn by providers in line with need up to 1% of the estimated capital value of each HIP2 scheme. Funding will be allocated following visits to the scheme by NHS England and NHS Improvement to discuss their proposals and how they can be helped to develop. Then Trusts will be required to provide a breakdown of what seed funding will be spent on and how that will accelerate the project development.

The budget has been received for 2020-21 and 2021-22 financial years, but funding could be available in the current financial year if there is an immediate and strong case.

Seed funding will not constitute approval of the scheme as a whole as that will be subject to further development and subject to the usual business case approvals process, including demonstrating affordability and value for money.