A RANGE of hospital projects seen as vital to helping sustain services and improve facilities in Gwent during the next four years, have been drawn up by health board bosses.

The wishlist includes proposals dating up to 2016/17, taking in specialist hospital units, wards, car parks and other areas.

But constraints on capital budgets mean that Aneurin Bevan Health Board is having to apply a strict process of prioritising these projects, and may have to apply for all-Wales capital funding for some of them as its annual discretionary capital budget during this period will not be enough.

Ahead of the building and opening of the long-awaited Specialist and Critical Care Centre – earmarked for the former Llanfrechfa Grange Hospital site near Cwmbran – investment must be made in existing services at, in particular, the Royal Gwent and Nevill Hall Hospitals, but also at sites such as County and St Cadoc’s Hospitals.

Discretionary capital budgets are annual awards made to health boards to pay for the likes of essential equipment replacement and estate infrastructure repairs, and work to ensure buildings comply with the law in terms of fire safety, and health and safety requirements.

Currently the annual amount is £5.676 million, but the combined total required to carry out the schemes identified by the health board over the next four years is several millions of pounds more than will be available.

A health board report calls the shortfall “significant” and warns that representations will have to be made to the Welsh Government for all-Wales capital funding for projects that cannot be paid for from the discretionary capital budget.

But given that all-Wales capital funding is likely to be over-subscribed too, it may be difficult for the board to fund everything it considers to be a priority.

Among the schemes on the health board’s radar over the next four years are ward refurbishments at the Royal Gwent and Nevill Hall, car park expansion at County Hospital in Griffithstown, and centralisation of breast services at County.

Reconfiguration of A&E, work on the main delivery unit at Nevill Hall, and upgrades to cardiac care facilities and a medical admissions unit are also proposed.