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Hospital's rotten roof repair to cost £20m

Google Princess of Wales hospital on a sunny day as seen from the roundabout at the entrance. the brown brick two story building has a brown roof and a canopy over the A and E entrance. Google
Rotten parts of the roof have caused disruption at the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend

The cost of replacing a rotting south Wales hospital roof has been estimated to be about £20m, a council has been told.

Rain water entering the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend caused a critical incident to be declared on 10 October.

Parts of the roof had disintegrated, a Bridgend council meeting was told, with 10,000 sq m of roofing "completely compromised".

A health board boss apologised to patients for the inconvenience, saying repairs would be finished by the summer of 2025.

Cwm Taf Morgannwg health board's chief executive Paul Mears told councillors he would be "happy to apologise" to staff, patients and the wider community who had "clearly been impacted".

It was also revealed a previous roof survey in 2019 showed "significant risk" with concrete tiles reaching the end of their life.

the sign in front of a forested area on the Princess of Wales hospital grounds. the hospital names is written in welsh and english on a white background framed by blue sign posts
The health board says patients could see their appointments at Princess of Wales Hospital moved to other locations

Councillor Ian Spiller said: "If you’ve had a report done in 2019 which highlights a significant risk, surely you plan for this in future budgets and surely if you know that there’s a problem, you do everything you can to mitigate it.”

Mr Mears said with only about £8m worth of capital allocation across all of its facilities in the health board area each year, and a £40m backlog of maintenance issues at the Princess of Wales Hospital alone, priorities of how to use resources had to be made.

It was also noted the health board was now speaking to the Welsh government about funding towards the estimated £20m needed to carry out the full roof replacement.

The health board previously said its whole estate would be used to manage the care of patients – it has a number of other major hospitals and smaller sites across Rhondda Cynon Taf and Merthyr Tydfil.