The Department for Health and Social Care’s New Hospital Programme (NHP), which will see the construction of 48 hospitals by 2030, is to explore market support for modern methods of construction and digital technology.
The government has confirmed an initial £3.7bn in funding over the next four years for the NHP, which involves the construction of 40 new hospitals together with eight hospital schemes which have already secured previous investment and will be delivered as part of the programme.
In a Prior Information Notice (PIN) issued on the government’s Find a Tender service, the NHP said it wished to initiate early supply chain involvement across a wide range of suppliers and topics, including: procurement and commercial considerations, modern methods of construction, net zero carbon, digital technologies, and skills and workforce.
It said: “New standards will be developed to help standardise the design of new hospitals and make use of modular construction methods to speed up the build. The programmatic approach will facilitate continual improvement and adapt in response to lessons learned from earlier schemes.
“As part of the delivery of these new hospitals, NHS Trusts, with support of the central programme team, will be incorporating best practice design certified with input from the UK’s best qualified healthcare professionals to ensure the highest quality standards; with particular focus in areas such as improved patient flow, digitisation of services and clinical requirements.”
The government’s health infrastructure plan (HIP) launched in September 2019 with a £2.8bn investment that gave 6 new hospitals the funding to go ahead, alongside seed funding for trusts to work up business cases. The trusts that received seed funding were all given full funding to deliver an additional 25 hospitals.
The government announced in October last year that it was developing a standardised design for the 40 new hospitals, after the initial £3.7bn in funding was confirmed.
