Central Lancashire’s response to recent government announcement regarding the Health Infrastructure Plan

The central Lancashire health and care system is currently exploring options for how services could be arranged differently in future, through what is known as the Our Health Our Care programme locally. All of these options aim to improve health outcomes and experiences for local people as well as make the best use of the existing hospital sites and clinical workforce. At this stage, no decisions have been made about these options and will not happen until a full public consultation has taken place.

However, when the Joint Committee of the two local Clinical Commissioning Groups met in public on 28 August 2019 to consider these options, the Committee also stated a desire to explore, in parallel, the possibility of securing the necessary funding required to build a new hospital. It was recognised that this would be a longer-term solution and could not be considered as an option for any public consultation. On average a new hospital build can take around 7-10 years to be completed.

Denis Gizzi, Chief Officer of the Greater Preston and Chorley and South Ribble CCGs, said:

“We know that there are improvements which we need to make for patient outcomes and experiences before any new hospital could be built and this is the aim of the work we are doing via the Our Health Our Care Programme.

“We also recognise that a potential new hospital in the area could provide a more sustainable long-term solution. We will continue to work very closely as a whole health and care system in central Lancashire to make sure that we are in the best position possible when the necessary capital funding we need to deliver these improvements becomes available to us.”

Background

In October 2019, Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care visited central Lancashire and met with local NHS leaders. During the visit, Mr Hancock recognised and supported the need to reconfigure services across the two existing hospital sites in order to make the necessary improvements for the immediate future. Mr Hancock also discussed with local leaders the government’s Health Infrastructure Plan and commitment to building 40 new hospitals across the country. This followed the announcement in the central Lancashire NHS will be given a slice of a £100m pot of funding to help develop plans for the longer-term vision of a new hospital build. You can read more about this here: https://hlsc.franktesting.co.uk/central-lancs/latest-news/future-plans-health-and-care-services-receive-support-secretary-state