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Cambridge University Hospitals Trust faces £125m repair backlog bill




Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) has the eighth largest high-risk repairs backlog among NHS trusts in England, according to analysis of data released by NHS Digital.

The foundation trust, which runs Addenbrooke’s and the Rosie, has seen a 152 per cent rise in its high-risk repair costs with the bill rising from £24.8m in the last financial year to £62.4m.

Ambulances outside Addenbrooke’s A&E Picture: Keith Heppell
Ambulances outside Addenbrooke’s A&E Picture: Keith Heppell

These are defined as repairs which must be urgently addressed to prevent catastrophic failure or major disruption to clinical services.

The cost of general acute hospital repairs backlog at the trust has also risen by more than 25 per cent to almost £125m in the last financial year.

Although there were no injuries or “clinical service incidents” caused by “estates and infrastructure failure” in the past year at CUH, there were two in the previous year, according to the data. The repair costs have been sourced from a public dataset, which tracks the amount the NHS needs to maintain its buildings.

A CUH spokesperson said: “Like many NHS hospitals, Cambridge University Hospitals has the challenge of maintaining a large, ageing estate. On a regular basis all of the estate is risk-assessed and an on-going programme of repair and refurbishment is carried out according to its priority.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We have invested significant sums to upgrade and modernise NHS buildings – including £4.2billion this financial year – so staff have the facilities needed to provide world-class care for patients.

“Trusts are responsible for prioritising this funding to maintain and refurbish their premises, including the renewal and replacement of equipment.

“This is on top of the expected investment of over £20bn for the New Hospital Programme, a further £1.7bn for over 70 hospital upgrades across England, and a range of nationally funded infrastructure improvements in mental health, urgent and emergency care and diagnostic capacity.”

This comes as latest published figures estimate the bill to complete so-called high-risk repairs needed at NHS acute hospitals has swollen to £2bn – up by more than a third compared to the previous year.

The cost to repair all infrastructure issues reached more than £9.5bn in 2022-23. There has been a rise of £867m over five years, adjusting for inflation.

A wide-ranging study by the BBC Shared Data Unit analysed data from the last five years of the Estates Returns Information Collection (ERIC) to look at the cost of the backlog of repairs facing hospitals in the NHS.

These repairs are grouped into four risk areas: low, moderate, significant, and high risk.

Researchers found that high-risk repairs rose by more than a third between 2021-22 and 2022-23. Data is collected by financial year.

The BBC study found that disrepair in hospitals across England led to disruption to patients’ care in at least 1,000 separate incidents in a year, although no incidents were reported at CUH. It asked every acute hospital trust in England to provide details of when estates and infrastructure failures had caused so-called “clinical service incidents”.

These are when the ability to deliver care has been affected by failures in the hospital environment. Incidents included problems with electrical, water or ventilation systems, internal fabric and fixtures, roofs and structures, or lifts and hoists.

A total of 86 trusts provided a response, revealing there had been at least 1,385 reports of infrastructure problems, impacting the care of at least 1,055 patients. The trust with the highest cost backlog of high risk repairs was Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, which stood at close to £393m.



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