Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to reduce the processing time of business case approvals for New Hospitals Programme bids.

The Government is committed to building 40 new hospitals by 2030 - backed by an expected over £20 billion of investment in hospital infrastructure

We are working with all trusts, including Kettering, on what the certainty this funding confirmation represents and how it will benefit staff and patients

Our new standardisation approach to hospital design and construction, Hospital 2.0, means the process to review and agree business cases will be more streamlined, delivering results more quickly and almost halving the average time to develop and build hospitals.