Wokingham MP Clive Jones has reacted strongly after it was revealed that the government is only giving £4.4 million for repairs to the Royal Berkshire hospital.
Liberal Democrat analysis of the Royal Berks’ maintenance data has revealed the cost to eliminate the highest risk backlog – where failure to address repairs urgently could lead to serious injury to both staff and patients as well as major disruption to services – would not be covered by the money given out by the Government.
Mr. Jones said: “The RBH have made it clear that they need over £102 million right now for their backlog of repairs, and they may need as much as £400 million to cover all of the repairs necessary over the next decade.
“So £4.4million does not touch the sides. Even if the RBH received £4.4million for the next 10 years, they would still have a massive shortfall.”
In addition to the current maintenance problems, the hospital has said it may need up to £300 million more to keep running safely while they wait for a rebuild. This extra cost is a result of the government pushing the new hospital date further into the future.
Jones made this funding shortfall clear to the minister responsible for the New Hospitals programme, in a meeting on Tuesday afternoon.
After the meeting, he said: “I have now written to the Minister expressing my concerns and asking for an urgent meeting to talk specifically about the maintenance needs for the Royal Berks.
“The new government are approaching the New Hospitals Programme much more seriously than the Conservatives ever did, and this was evidenced by the minister in the meeting with MPs today.
“However, maintenance still remains a massive problem. This is why I have requested a meeting with the minister to understand what the government are going to do about this really serious problem created by the Conservatives’ neglect of hospitals.
“Children who aren’t even been born yet will be turning 18 before the earliest possible date for a new hospital.”
Jones also criticised successive governments for delaying the rebuild of the hospital.
He said: |“We know that the Conservatives completely failed the Royal Berks. Their dithering meant £7 million which could have gone to fixing leaking roofs was wasted on a hospital programme that was never going to go anywhere.
“We also know that they never allocated enough funds or enough resources from the department of health for their building of the 40 new hospitals.
“The conservatives failed both staff and patients.”
