Health Secretary Steve Barclay has admitted not all of the 40 new hospitals promised for England by 2030 will be brand new.
Mr Barclay also acknowledged that some of the hospitals originally promised would now be completed after 2030, but a total of 40 projects would still be finished by that date.
When pressed over whether a refurbishment could be considered a “new” hospital, Mr Barclay said: “If it’s a new wing, a new facility, a women’s and children hospital for example as part of a wider compass… what matters to you as a patient is whether the facilities are state of the art, whether they’re new”.
He went on to say: “We’re being honest in saying there will be difficulties on some of the schemes. There’s often local factors that need to be worked through like land acquisitions, service redesign… which make it challenging to complete those by 2030. We are being honest that some schemes will take slightly longer than 2030 but we’re going to get on with them.”
Difficulties? Why do home builders like Cala, Taylor Wimpey, Ashberry Homes, and Persimmons all seem to be able to crack on and build thousands of houses on a site, sometimes running roughshod over the rules while never running out of money and never going massively over budget? It never seems difficult for them. In fact, some of these builders could do with being reined in.
On the other hand, anything that the government or local authority wants to build sputters and stumbles forward. The Scottish Parliament at Holyrood is a classic example of how not to build something: building starts 18 months late due to committees, subcommittees, think tanks and various surveys all having to justify their wages by having a say; the architect gets fired, sues the government, goes to court, and then the High Court; the builder gets replaced or downs tools for whatever reason. By this time it’s two and a half years late and ten times over the original estimate.
How does this happen? How does a library in a village with a footprint of two to four bedroom-houses cost £3 million when two houses would be £800k? We’ll hear how it has to be “sustainable”, which ultimately means it has some solar panels, grass growing on the roof, and the toilets flush using captured rainwater. Some bureaucrats or political types tell us this is the cost of being “carbon neutral”.
The Homeland Party firmly believe, as we suspect you do, that the astronomical cost and the administrative circus around these projects is a massive scam, and we all pay for it! There are people getting rich off the back of these schemes, and it won’t be the men on site. We would see to it that this senseless waste of funds ends.
