Health chiefs ‘in dark’ over funds for new hospital
A NEW children’s hospital was delayed because officials were kept in the dark about funding, an inquiry heard yesterday.
The investigation into the construction of the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People and Department of Clinical Neurosciences in Edinburgh has heard how a catalogue of problems led to it opening more than a decade after it was first proposed.
NHS Lothian had expected funding from the Scottish Government.
But the health board’s director of finance, Susan Goldsmith, said ministers announced in 2010 that the hospital would be built with the Non-Profit Distributing (NPD) model of private finance, which can involve several lenders.
This caused problems for the health board because the new children’s hospital was being built next to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, which is run by healthcare operator Consort under a Private Finance Initiative, the previous funding model for largescale public projects.
There were ‘multiple stakeholders’ with their own assessments of the risks of the project, and questions over how the buildings would join onto each other and where cars would park, she said.
Miss Goldsmith said: ‘It would not be usual for the board to be formally consulted in relation to such decisions as it was a policy change determined by government. However, what is more unusual is that we were not given any advance private notice of the public announcement.
‘If we were consulted, we would most likely have reiterated our concern about the additional complexities. At the time I knew the project was going to be more difficult to deliver, but I had no idea just how difficult. I have been asked whether the switch to NPD resulted in delays to the project. It is my conclusion that it did.’
There were delays over acquiring land for car parking, with ‘very difficult’ negotiations taking two years, she said.
Health chiefs also had to spend extra time on procurement for the NPD and on resolving access and enabling works with Consort.
Iain Graham, director of capital planning and projects at NHS Lothian, told the inquiry it was left playing ‘piggy in the middle’ trying to deal with two competing private finance models for two hospitals at the site.
Problems included having to build a new energy centre for the children’s hospital rather than linking to the one at the infirmary.
Senior programme director Brian Currie said in a written submission that NHS Lothian was ‘well-advanced in our negotiations with the principal supply chain partner’ when the funding model was changed.
The children’s hospital was due to open in July 2019 but was delayed after last-minute inspections found safety concerns over its ventilation systems. It eventually opened in March last year.
The Scottish Hospitals Inquiry, which is chaired by Lord Brodie and is also investigating problems at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, continues.
‘Additional complexities’