THE Alexandra Hospital and Worcestershire Royal were never in the running for any of the £1.8billion allocated for the NHS because their plans were not ready, says Chancellor of the Exchequer and Bromsgrove MP Sajid Javid.
Last week Redditch MP Rachel Maclean had called on Boris Johnson to make sure the Alex and Royal were ‘number one and number two on the Prime Minister’s list of hospital upgrades’.
Instead the PM handed the money out elsewhere, with University Hospitals Birmingham – which runs the Queen Elizabeth Hospital – receiving £97.1m to new facilities to replace outdated outpatient, treatment and diagnostic units.
However Mrs Maclean held out hope that Redditch will get a share of a further £1billion in NHS capital spending.
“There is more money coming out of No10 and that will be my next line of attack, however Health Secretary Matt Hancock cannot write cheques out randomly, there has to be a business case and I will be looking for the Trust (Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust) to get itself on the front foot when that happens.”
The Chancellor, Mr Javid, said every one of the 20 hospitals which had received funding had already put their plans in place and had them signed off.
“I know plans are currently being put together for the Worcestershire Royal Hospital and the Alexandra and the Department of Health and the Treasury are happy to look at those plans but at the moment they are not ready,” he said.
“As a local MP Worcestershire’s hospitals will always be a priority for me but the plans for them are not far enough down the line.
“There will be other opportunities coming up and as soon as plans are finalised, they will be carefully looked at.”
Paul Brennan, deputy chief executive at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “ There was no bidding process for the recent release of capital funding. We do have two proposals which are developed which we plan to submit for the next round of capital funding.”
