Great ambitions, let’s speed up delivery

Two updates, one familiar story: great ambitions, but slow delivery.

Amid the political churn, there were two significant updates from Government last week on Britain's creaking critical infrastructure.

1. The latest New Hospital Programme (NHP) annual report

There are many excellent ambitions in the report, from increasing the number of single rooms to adopting standardised designs. But delivery is simply not proceeding at pace. The traditionally procured New Hospital Programme has delivered just seven hospitals in seven years. By comparison, PFI delivered around 90 hospitals in roughly 10 years.

Yes, there are important lessons to learn from PFI, as we've written about extensively. But why is there still no new PPP programme for hospitals, when successful OECD countries from Australia to Canada continue to use this model?

Why is a new PPP model considered good enough for neighbourhood health centres, but not for hospitals?

2. New Neighbourhood Health Centres

The new Neighbourhood Health Centres have the potential to transform community healthcare, bringing care much closer to people's homes in settings they are more likely to trust. Our members stand ready to deliver these centres and help realise the ambitions set out in the 10 Year Health Plan.

Last week's 10 Year Capital Plan for Health and Social Care provides some encouraging signals, including welcome proposals to simplify the payment mechanism. However, we await further detail.

There is no reason why delivery cannot be accelerated.

We have been discussing a new PPP model for almost two years for centres that could be delivered rapidly using existing procurement routes, including the successful LIFT model. According to NHS figures, these centres should take, on average, just 13 to 14 months to build.

These are not complex assets. We are now waiting for confirmation of a national pipeline, which the Government says will come "later in the financial year".

Our members stand ready to unlock significant private capital and work alongside the construction sector to get spades in the ground.

Let's get building.