MP and hospital staff meet minister over rebuild

An MP, hospital staff and patients met a health minister to discuss what can be done to maintain a Berkshire hospital that will not be rebuilt until at least 2037.

Parts of the Royal Berkshire Hospital (RBH) in Reading are nearly 200-years-old, 95% of its lifts are beyond the end of their life and operations are regularly cancelled.

RBH staff were previously told the hospital might have been replaced in 2031 but in January health secretary Wes Streeting said it will only be replaced between 2037 and 2039.

Wokingham MP Clive Jones and senior staff including the hospital's chief strategy officer, Andy Statham, met health minister Karin Smyth on Wednesday.

Jones said the meeting was "very productive" and that Smyth had pledged to help the hospital.

"It's going to cost £300m to £400m over the next 10 years keep the estate going and we wanted to come up with a few ideas to make sure that we can keep the hospital going in reasonable condition," Jones said .

"The repairs that we need, they have got to happen. They cannot be instead of a new hospital. We're bursting out of the seams of the hospital.

"And in the next few years we are going to have so many more people to treat because health treatments are going to be improving an awful lot."

Earlier this year, RBH bosses warned they were "losing the battle" against a constant need for repairs.

Fifty operations were cancelled in 18 months due to estate disrepair, including power cuts, leaking roofs and collapsed ceilings.

"We have got some really old buildings at the Royal Berkshire, some of which will be coming up to nearly 200-years-old. Every day we have challenges in providing safe care which our teams work really valiantly to do," Mr Statham said.

"It's a difficult situation we know the minister's in. Their resources are really tight in the public sector at the moment and we understand the position. That doesn't mean that what we need is any less.

"I think we got a real recognition of the challenges of what our patients face and our staff face but also a challenge to us: how can we think differently and how we can make use of community care, digital care, in order to manage things a bit differently in the future.

"We're doing everything we can to provide high quality care for our patients in Berkshire."

You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.