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Hospital bosses are planning to push for a new ‘health hub’ in the centre of Preston following the lengthy delay to plans to build a replacement Royal Preston.
Silas Nicolls, chief executive of Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (LTH), told a recent board meeting that the hold-up announced by the government last month – which means construction work on the new hospital will not now begin until 2037 at the earliest – was “very disappointing”.
However, he said the trust had to “come out fighting” in what were “challenging times” in order to ensure the best quality buildings and local services in the years ahead.
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As part of that vision, Mr. Nicholls said LTH was “really keen to pursue” the idea of a new city centre health facility.
“This would allow us to co-locate urgent care services, outpatients, diagnostics [and] some of our…clinic room-based services…into better facilities, more modern facilities – and actually have them in the centre of Preston, where [people can have] better access via public transport,” he explained.
The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) understands the proposal is at an embryonic stage, with no funding stream currently identified for delivering the hub. However, the blueprint will be part of broader discussions about population health with local authorities, MPs and local universities.
The concept reflects that previously championed both by Preston City Council leader Matthew Brown and Preston MP Sir Mark Hendrick – although their calls came before the delay to the new Royal Preston was announced and were actually in response to concerns about the prospect of the facility being built in South Ribble, some eight miles from its Fulwood base of almost 50 years.
Speaking to the LDRS about the fact the trust now wanted to make the centrally-located hub a reality, Cllr Brown told the LDRS: “As a city council, we have been fighting for – and would absolutely welcome – a city centre health hub to tackle the health inequalities we have been seeking to address for so long.
“Ideally, we would like to see an urgent care centre alongside a wide range of outpatient and diagnostic provision and modern GP service[s].”
Mr. Nicholls also told board colleagues that the existing Royal Preston, on Sharoe Green Lane, was in need of “significant remedial work” – particularly to the hospital accommodation block – now that it is going to remain in operation for the foreseeable future.
“Some of the conditions that our staff and our patients are having to experience on a regular basis aren’t acceptable,” the chief executive said.
The board heard that survey work had already been carried out and funding would now be sought.
As part of the case for securing government cash for a new Royal Preston, it was calculated in 2021 that the existing facility had a maintenance backlog totalling £157m.
As the LDRS revealed last year, that tally is £100m higher than nationally-collated NHS figures suggest.
The meeting was also told the plot of land acquired for the new Royal – off Stanifield Lane in Farington – would be retained, even though any building work was now so far off. Before the delay, a public engagement exercise had been poised to begin into that preferred site, but that survey of opinion has now been indefinitely postponed.
Non-executive LTH board director Tim Ballard said use of the land for complementary purposes, such as the creation of a long-awaited new pathology facility, should be considered – provided it did not compromise the ability to build a hospital on the site in future.
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