UK Inquiry Tracker

New Hospital Programme update

Public Accounts Committee Open Inquiry

Opened: 12 Dec 2025 Parliament page

The New Hospital Programme (NHP) was announced in 2020, with a commitment to build 40 new hospitals to add to the deteriorating hospital estate by 2030. In January 2025, government confirmed that all schemes previously included in the programme would be delivered, including replacing seven hospitals constructed with deteriorating reinforced … Read more The New Hospital Programme (NHP) was announced in 2020, with a commitment to build 40 new hospitals to add to the deteriorating hospital estate by 2030. In January 2025, government confirmed that all schemes previously included in the programme would be delivered, including replacing seven hospitals constructed with deteriorating reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, or RAAC. Funding will average to around £3bn a year from 2030, with main construction planned to begin between 2035 and 2039. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in its 2023 inquiry into the New Hospital Programme found no confidence that government would deliver on its promises, while calling for swifter action to address crumbling RAAC in hospitals. It also identified a risk that future hospitals were being designed to be too small, and highlighted the fact that the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) had for some years focused on short-term financial viability in ways that failed to consider the long-term consequences for services and patient care. The National Audit Office (NAO) will publish a follow-up report in early 2026 examining whether DHSC now has a resilient and credible programme and has addressed the concerns previously raised. Proceeding from the NAO report, the PAC will take evidence from senior officials from the DHSC and NHS England on likely topics including the programme’s aims, and whether schemes are on track to deliver against the government’s ambitions. If you have evidence on these issues, please submit here by 23:59 on Thursday 15 January 2026. Please look at the requirements for written evidence submissions and note that the Committee cannot accept material as evidence that is published elsewhere. The Committee decides what information to publish and how. You can request anonymity or confidentiality when you send evidence, but it is for the Committee to say whether it will agree.It may treat submissions confidentially, even where you have not requested this. Please note that the Committee’s inquiry cannot assist with individual cases. If you need help with an individual problem you are having, you may wish to read the information on Parliament’s website about who you can contact with different issues. Show less

28 Conclusions

1 Report

1 Oral session

1 Letter

1 Event

Activity timeline 4 events

22 Apr
2026

Report published

76th Report - New Hospital Programme update

2 Mar
2026

Correspondence

Letter from the Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health and Social Care relating to the Committee’s evidence session on 09 February…

9 Feb
2026

Oral evidence

Oral evidence session

9 Feb
2026

Formal meeting (oral evidence session) · The Grimond Room, Portcullis House

Committee event

Oral evidence sessions 1 session

9 Feb 2026

View on parliament.uk

Charlotte Taylor · Department of Health and Social Care Dr Amanda Doyle OBE · NHS England Elizabeth O'Mahony · Department of Health and Social Care Paul Mustow · Department of Health and Social Care Professor Chris Whitty Samantha Jones · Department of Health and Social Care Sir Jim Mackey · NHS England

Reports 1 report · click to expand

Title	HC No.	Published	Items	Response
76th Report - New Hospital Programme update	HC 1705	22 Apr 2026	28	Pending

Recommendations & Conclusions

28 results

2 Conclusion

76th Report - New Hospital Program…

With little contingency up to 2029–30, there is a risk that delays and cost overruns...

With little contingency up to 2029–30, there is a risk that delays and cost overruns in the early years will have knock on effects on subsequent hospital schemes. Although some of the early hospital schemes in the programme (known as … Read more

HM Treasury

New Hospital Programme update

Activity timeline 4 events

Oral evidence sessions 1 session

Reports 1 report · click to expand

Recommendations & Conclusions

With little contingency up to 2029–30, there is a risk that delays and cost overruns...

There is a risk that the new Hospital 2.0 design might not benefit some patients...

The Department has not yet developed a convincing rationale for the proposed size of new...

The Department has been slow to develop the capacity and capability it needs to deliver...

The 46 hospital schemes must deliver quality hospitals on time and on budget over 25...

On the basis of a Report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, we took evidence...

Wave 1 hospitals are significantly larger and more complex to build than the wave 0...

We asked the Department how it was ensuring that the smaller earlier projects would not...

The Department told us that it hoped that lessons learnt from its delivery of earlier...

Hospitals built from RAAC face significant safety risks, and schemes to replace them need to...

By 2025, the Department had already spent £500 million on maintenance and mitigations for RAAC...

We asked the Department if it expected to replace all seven RAAC hospitals on time,...

The Department also said it would have preferred to complete the replacement hospitals sooner, but...

More broadly, there are other hospitals outside the programme with problems which the Department must...

The Department aims to build hospitals in the programme to a new, standardised hospital design...

The Department assumes that these single bedrooms will be more efficient, reducing the average patient...

We asked the Department whether it had mechanisms in place to capture any unexpected downsides...

Written evidence we received from NHS providers noted that trusts were concerned about future financial...

The NHP programme business case assumes a 6% average increase in overnight beds across all...

We asked the Department how it had concluded that the new hospitals required more beds...

We asked for assurance that there would be enough additional capacity outside of hospitals, given...

We asked for assurance about the quality of the NHP demand and capacity model, given...

The Department said that it continually repeats the demand and capacity modelling to check the...

In 2023 the previous Committee reported that the programme had struggled to recruit staff and...

The Department told us that while there had been a slight pause in recruitment, the...

The NHP programme board currently reports to the Department and NHS England boards.

The Government recently established new arrangements for how particularly risky, costly and complex projects (‘mega...

In September 2025 we reported that some critical programmes had been left out of plans...

Correspondence 1 letter