New date for Gwent hospital special centre (From South Wales Argus)

New date for Gwent hospital special centre

By Andy Rutherford - Health correspondent »

HEALTH bosses estimate that Gwent’s long-proposed Specialist and Critical Care Centre could open in summer 2018, a year later than proposed last spring, when the project’s future was reaffirmed by then health minister Edwina Hart.

Aneurin Bevan Health Board is working on an updated outline business case for the much-delayed flagship hospital project, which must be submitted to the Welsh Government by the end of this year.

The centre, which will treat Gwent’s sickest patients, has endured a tortuous development, with planning having already been delayed for a year from late 2008, due to the tightening of NHS purse strings triggered by economic downturn.

Its future appeared to have been put in doubt again last autumn, when new health minister Lesley Griffiths said it could not be guaranteed that all uncommitted NHS Wales capital projects would go ahead.

But health board chiefs have sought to reassure sceptics that the centre is on course, despite the slow progress and project reviews.

Chief executive Dr Andrew Goodall told a board meeting that work is continuing on the business case, to be submitted by the autumn.

“This is not about bureaucrats sitting around a table.

This is about the final stages that are required for any scheme like this in Wales,” he said.

“It will be the minister’s decison on final approval, but we have already been given several millions of pounds to finish this process (the outline business case) off.”

The health board, he added, is displacing staff at the Llanfrechfa Grange Hospital site, where the centre will be built, in preparation.

Last spring, it was announced that the estimated cost had been reduced by almost a quarter, to around £230 million. But the health board was confident that the integrity of the 420-bed scheme has been retained.