Hospital rebuild could cost up to £1.5bn

Work to replace a hospital with a brand new building could cost up to £1.5bn, councillors have been told.

Airedale Hospital, near Keighley, which serves parts of West Yorkshire and North Yorkshire, was built using collapse-prone reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) and had been earmarked for a complete rebuild under the previous government's New Hospitals Programme.

Work on the rebuild could begin in 2028, a meeting of Bradford Council's Health and Social Care Scrutiny Committee was told.

However, a report by council officers said the scheme would be "complex and come with considerable challenges".

The hospital serves 220,000 people living in the Bradford and Craven districts.

Plans to rebuild it were confirmed by government earlier this year following a review of the scheme – with Airedale selected as one of the first wave of hospital rebuilds.

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, a report prepared for the council meeting said: "A capital funding envelope of between £1bn and £1.5bn has been confirmed, recognising the need to completely rebuild the hospital.

"Building the new hospital will be complex and come with considerable challenges.

"We need to make sure services remain safe and can continue effectively during construction."

Before work could begin on the new building, works including the creation of a new access route from Skipton Road and construction of a new multi-storey car park will would need to be carried out, the meeting heard.

Stuart Shaw, director of strategy, planning and partnerships at Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, said the new hospital would be "a taller building, more than two storeys".

"The current hospital is a 1960s build. It is two storeys over a huge space, with long corridors connecting different buildings," he said.

"The new build will be more compact."

He told councillors it would have a similar number of beds to the current hospital.

Mr Shaw said he had been told the start date could be 2028, but he did not currently have a completion date.

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