Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take to help improve services at West Berkshire Community Hospital.

The Government is committed to shifting the focus of the National Health Service out of hospitals and into the community, and this will be referenced in our forthcoming 10-Year Health Plan. We recognise that delivering high-quality NHS healthcare services requires the right infrastructure in the right places.

The Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and West Berkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) and providers have been provisionally allocated £39.3 million this financial year from our Constitutional Standards Recovery Fund to deliver new surgical hubs, diagnostic scanners, and beds to increase capacity for elective and emergency care. In addition, it has been provisionally allocated £2.8 million from our Primary Care Utilisation Fund to modernise and upgrade general practice surgeries, and £37.1 million from our Estates Safety Fund to address critical infrastructure and safety risks.

We are encouraging local NHS trusts and ICBs to explore possible options that could address constitutional standards recovery alongside addressing infrastructure issues, maximising value for money and patient benefits.

Alongside national programme allocations, the system has been provisionally allocated £123.1 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 acute and community hospital infrastructure.