Royal Liverpool Hospital

(asked on 28th March 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what date is planned for the official opening of the new Royal Hospital Liverpool; whether that date is the originally planned date; and whether any structural problems have been identified within the building.


Answered by
Philip Dunne Portrait
Philip Dunne
This question was answered on 5th April 2017

The new Royal Hospital in Liverpool was expected to admit its first patients in the summer of 2017. The projected handover from the contractor to the Trust, following completion of the construction works, was scheduled to be in March 2017. It is then standard to allow a further three months for the Trust to carry out clinical commissioning and for relocation of services before the Hospital is ready to admit patients for treatment. Unfortunately the construction work has been subject to significant delay.

The reasons for delays to the construction timetable have been the discovery of asbestos; issues with using cranes in high winds; a delay in completing a new electrical connection and more recently, the discovery of cracks in some of the concrete beams, for which all remedial work has now been carried out. Clearly, this delay in delivering a new flagship hospital for the people of Liverpool is disappointing. However, we must emphasise that the costs associated with the problems to the new building have to be met by the building contractor and do not fall on the National Health Service. The Trust does not make any payment until the new hospital is finished and is available for use.

Currently the Trust is expecting the contractor to hand over the building at the end of February 2018. The move is then expected to be completed 14 weeks after the handover date.

Reticulating Splines