Crisis hospital to open at last (10 months late and £28m over budget)
A FLAGSHIP sick children’s hospital is finally set to open to staff after months of delays and massive cost overruns.
The Royal Hospital for Children and Young People was meant to take its first patients last July.
But a number of design faults were exposed at the campus, in Edinburgh, leading to a row between the Scottish Government and NHS Lothian.
Staff will finally be able to get into the hospital from May 25 but it will not be fully opened until the autumn.
The hospital, better known as the ‘Sick Kids’, was supposed to cost £150 million but NHS Lothian has already paid an additional £11.2 million.
Health Secretary Jeane Freeman has also made a further £20 million available, but the Government has said it expected the total overspend to be £28 million.
Taxpayers are already paying £1.4 million a month under the finance deal signed to build the hospital.
Plans for staff to move in next month were announced by the Health Secretary in response to a parliamentary question.
Ms Freeman said that ‘the programme director and NHS
Lothian have continued to work positively with contractors’ to address issues identified in reports by NHS National Services Scotland. She added: ‘This progress has resulted in NHS Lothian being able to confirm an intended draft timetable.’
It means the Department of Clinical Neurosciences will start moving in on May 25, Ms Freeman said.
The hospital was built by Brookfield Multiplex, the same firm behind the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, which has been hit by a water contamination scandal.
Edinburgh’s new Sick Kids had several major design issues, including poor ventilation systems, water supplies that could spread disease, and faulty drainage that risked filling the building with raw sewage. Such concerns led to Ms Freeman halting its grand opening last year.
MSPs have demanded assurances that all problems are now fixed.
Scottish Tory health spokesman Miles Briggs said: ‘The issue of the new Sick Kids hospital should have been resolved many years ago and it’s an acute failure of this SNP Government that it wasn’t.
‘Parents and staff need cast-iron assurances that the hospital will open in the autumn. If anything, the coronavirus crisis should incentivise the Government to get it open sooner.’
Scottish Labour health spokesman Monica Lennon said: ‘It was supposed to be a flagship project but the management and construction of the new Sick Kids hospital has been a shambles from start to finish.’
NHS Lothian would not say when the first patient might be treated at the hospital. Finance director Susan Goldsmith said: ‘We’ve been working closely and positively with our contractor and progress continues.’
NHS Lothian was aware of 2,000 snagging issues with the hospital in May of last year and had concerns about ‘a poor standard of quality’ in the work, board minutes state.
Last month, Brian Houston, former chairman of the health board, accused Ms Freeman of ‘lying’ in her claim that she overruled NHS Lothian to delay the opening.
The Scottish Government said: ‘Significant work [at the hospital] included ensuring the compliance of the ventilation and other critical systems by NHS Lothian and contractors, which has allowed a draft timetable for the move to be published.
‘The estimated costs for the project remain at £28 million covering both the settlement agreement and costs associated with the delay.’
‘Parents and staff need cast-iron assurances’