Issue - items at meetings - 3T Development of Royal Sussex County Hospital

Report of the Head of Law (Monitoring Officer) on progress regarding the ‘3T’ redevelopment of the Royal Sussex County Hospital (copy attached)

           Duane Passman, Director of 3Ts, , BSUH, gave committee members a presentation and update on the 3Ts long-term development of the RSCH site.

           It was noted that in order to commence the main development, a series of decanting and enabling moves would need to be undertaken which represented just over 20% of the existing hospital site requiring temporary, or permanent relocation.

           The first of these moves, the refurbishment of the former St. Mary’s Hall school is underway and will be complete in September 2013.

           Professor Passman reminded members that part of the decant project would be the relocation of the nuclear medicine department, which is already in temporary accommodation.  Without this (in advance of the move to the main building), it was likely that the service would have to be closed due to the condition of the existing buildings, which were built as temporary forty years ago.

           It was noted that it had been a requirement of the former Strategic Health Authority that all the decant projects (including St. Mary’s) could be demonstrated to prove value for money and intrinsic value in their own right.                                                                              

In design for the new hospital buildings, care will be taken to arrange the new development in a more streamlined way, for example so that wards for general medicine and care of the elderly will be very close to the Emergency Department, where the majority of patients in these care groups are admitted to hospital from.

Professor Passman said that the 3Ts project team has learnt lessons from other hospital development schemes that have been successful in carrying out major developments without affecting other services to ensure that patient access is not affected unduly during the period of the development.

65.2   Professor Passman then answered members’ questions.

65.3    Members said that several of the HWSOSC committee had sat on the Planning Committee that had given planning permission for the 3Ts development, but they had not appreciated the huge time scale of the development at the time. Was it the case that the government was using delaying tactics?

           Professor Passman said that planning approval had been given in January  2012; getting full planning consent had been a pre-requisite of making the business case and being able to progress approvals with the Department of Health and the Treasury. BSUH had anticipated that they would have had final approval from central government in 2012, but they are still providing more information to the decision makers.

It was frustrating that the decision has not yet been made but the prize was still there. The 3Ts scheme was one of the largest publicly funded health schemes in years, looking for £420 million of public money, so BSUH needs to assure their financial sustainability into the future. BSUH did not think that delaying tactics were being used, but that central government was assuring themselves that services were safe, sustainable and high quality and would remain so.

Mr Kershaw said that the clinical case had been accepted, and final assurances were being made. The details would be submitted by the end of May and they expected to hear a response by summer 2013. There has been no relationship between the recent problems in the Trust and a delay in the decision making.

65.4    Members asked for assurances that the development would be covering every necessary health need.

Professor Passman said that they are constantly asked to justify all decisions, and to ensure that they have met all of the needs that they can identify or are required to meet. Technology is always being developed, but having any new equipment will be an improvement on the current provision. It was always the case however, that after a new hospital building is built, within sixty years, everything will be changes at least once. Parts of the hospital development’s plans are to keep a column grid building design so that the space can be as flexible as possible.

65.5    Members asked for assurances that BSUH would not face a Mid-Staffs situation and go into special measures because of poor facilities.

Mr Kershaw said that the Mid Staffs situation occurred because the hospital was clinically and financially unsustainable; this would have happened as the end stage of a large number of monitoring reports etc. In BSUH’s case, it is responding to a set of difficult financial challenges, in a similar way to other hospital trusts. It is not the same as being in an administration regime.

65.6    Members asked whether the delay in the start date will mean an ongoing rise in the end costs and a corresponding rise in savings being made.

Professor Passman said that some costs were capital and others revenue costs. He was glad that there had been no real inflation in the £420 million capital cost due to the overall slowdown in the construction sector which meant that there had been no compromise on the quality of the planned facilities.  He added that this had not impacted either on the running costs.

65.7    The Chair of the HWOSC brought the item to a conclusion, thanking the Trust for the presentation and saying that HWOSC was committed to and supportive of the proposals. There were understandable concerns with regard to decanting the services, but this was a necessary part of the development and the committee would keep an eye on this as it happened.