Government promises £760m to modernise NHS

By Julie Griffiths on 28 March 2018 NHS England

The funding, announced today (28 March), will be shared across 40 NHS hospitals in England to create new buildings, wards and beds.

It is the biggest investment of its kind in the NHS in over 10 years.

The secretary of state for health and social care Jeremy Hunt made the announcement about the new funding, which will be spent on programmes to meet local demand, such as new urgent care centres and refurbishing mental health facilities.

The Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin sustainability and transformation partnership will receive £300m to transform local hospital services. It proposes to use the funding to develop an emergency care site and a separate planned care site, with 24-hour urgent care centres at both sites.

The remainder of the money will be awarded to 39 smaller projects, including £6m to upgrade services of eight trusts across Yorkshire and £8m for a new health and wellbeing centre to join up local NHS services in Kent.

There will also be £13m for two new urgent care centres in Newton Abbot and Torquay, and refurbishment of Torbay Hospital’s A&E department. Several million pounds will be allocated for local NHS services in London, including one project worth up to £11m.

Jeremy Hunt said: ‘As the NHS approaches its 70th birthday, we are backing it with one of the largest capital programmes in NHS history. As well as a whole new emergency care development in Shropshire, we are backing local NHS services with new buildings, beds and wards so that staff who have been working incredibly hard over winter can have confidence we are expanding capacity for the future.

‘Further major projects are also under consideration across the country and we intend to announce one large scale scheme the size of the Shrewsbury and Telford plan every year going forward based on high-quality plans coming forward from local NHS leaders.’

The government is also pledging £150m to support the NHS to become more efficient, with the additional money used to improve the use of a digital programme to help the NHS use its workforce better. It will also enable more efficient use of energy in hospitals, and improve pharmacy IT and administration systems to reduce medication errors and improve patient safety.