Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what (a) support and (b) resources his Department are providing to help support medical facilities in Crewe and Nantwich constituency.

The Crewe and Nantwich constituency, like all constituencies, will benefit from a fair share of the £22.6 billion increase in day-to-day health spending and the £3.1 billion increase to the capital budget over the 2024/25 to 2025/26 period, as announced at the Autumn Budget 2024.

The Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board (ICB) has been provisionally allocated £43.3 million from our Constitutional Standards Recovery Fund for 2025/26 to deliver new surgical hubs, diagnostic scanners, and beds to increase capacity for elective and emergency care. In addition, it has been provisionally allocated £5 million from our Primary Care Utilisation Fund to modernise and upgrade general practice surgeries, and £18.1 million from our Estates Safety Fund to address critical infrastructure and safety risks.

The ICB has also been provisionally allocated £61.7 million for reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) mitigation and eradication for trusts that are part of the National Health Service’s RAAC programme. This includes funding for the RAAC mitigation works at Leighton Hospital. Funding is subject to business case approval.

Alongside national programme allocations, the ICB has been provisionally allocated £214.7 million in operational capital funding, including primary care business-as-usual capital, for 2025/26, to be prioritised according to local needs such as investing in hospital infrastructure.

Leighton Hospital in Crewe is part of Wave 1 of the New Hospital Programme (NHP) with construction of the new hospital expected to commence in 2027/28. As an RAAC scheme, we are working at pace to ensure Leighton Hospital will be replaced as quickly as possible and my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has commissioned an updated site by site report, due in summer 2025, to inform decisions on the delivery of the replacement RAAC hospitals. The Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is also being supported by the NHP to develop their Strategic Outline Case as part of the business case process for their main hospital.