Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, responsible for the new hospital in Berwick, today made a statement that strip-out work will start on 19 October: ‘removing mechanical and electrical systems and pipework and internal walls and fittings…In late November work will start work to remove the façade and steel frame system, which will need to be replaced. The main structural steel work will remain.’
The project manager, Damon Kent, Northumbria Healthcare Facilities Management’s managing director remains in post and the team behind the project appears unchanged.
Damon Kent said: ‘It has been a difficult period as there are complexities around a new contractor taking over the incomplete work of another company.’
Northumbria Healthcare will be holding another public drop-in information session at Berwick Town Hall on Wednesday December 9 and will confirm and share details closer to the time.
‘There will be an increase in site activity while this work is carried out and a large amount of vehicle movement to and from the site,’ said the Trust’s new statement. ‘Everything will be done to keep disruption to a minimum. It is planned that this phase of work will be done by spring next year.’
The statement concluded: ‘It is hoped that the majority of work to construct the new hospital will be done by summer 2028.’
Cllr Georgina Hill, Chair Northumberland County Council’s Health and Wellbeing Overview and Scrutiny Committee (HWOSC), said;
‘Residents will soon have the depressing spectacle of work being down to take down and strip out parts of the existing structure. Understandably, demands for accountability are growing and I am sure many residents will be thinking ‘heads should roll’.
‘The NCC HWOSC, which I Chair, was the first to publicly call for a public inquiry.
‘There is some ongoing legal action in relation to the original contractor and, presumably, other internal processes within which are currently being kept confidential by the Trust.
‘The upshot of all that will need to be subject to further scrutiny given the very obvious public interest.’
Meanwhile questions arise over the appropriateness or otherwise of the location and whether the county council’s HWOSC should use its unique legal power to scrutinise the NHS project.
If an NHS Trust is failing a project that involves a ‘substantial development or variation’ of local health services, the HWOSC can formally refer (or “call in”) the NHS Trust to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care under the National Health Service Act 2006.
This is triggered if the NHS Trust failed to properly consult the council or the public on the failing project or its proposed fix.
The grounds would be that the Trust team’s gross mismanagement is severely harming the delivery of local healthcare.
The council can leverage its position as a major creditor (NCC loaned £25 million to the Trust) to demand that NHS England place the Trust into National Recovery Support (special measures). This national intervention has the legal power to sack the failing executive team and install an emergency turnaround board.
Cllr Nicole Brooke, NCC Berwick North, in whose ward the hospital is located, and who has pledged to deliver the projects she ‘inherited’ has not so far replied to a request for comment. Necessary updates will follow.