Cross-border Healthcare

Julia Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Julia Buckley (Shrewsbury) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick) on securing this important debate.

Cross-border healthcare affects us in Shropshire because our Shrewsbury and Telford hospital NHS trust serves not just 353,000 residents across Shropshire but a further 70,000 residents just over the border in Wales, including the hon. Member’s constituents in Powys. He will be aware that, for many years, the trust languished at the bottom of the national league tables. We had the worst waiting times for both elective care and emergency treatment, as well as for ambulance pick-ups. Worse still, when we finally got an ambulance, it would then spend many hours waiting outside A&E because there were not enough beds to treat urgent patients. Much of that was documented in the TV programme “Dispatches” two years ago, which was a blow to the morale of our hard-working NHS staff.

Since then, I am delighted to report, there have been radical changes at the Royal Shrewsbury hospital in my constituency. Thanks to a significant capital investment project of more than £320 million, we have been the recipient of a hospital transformation programme to improve health and care services across the piece for Shropshire, Telford and mid-Wales. We are now one year into that construction project, with more than half the structure completed—a four-storey building at the front entrance. I visited last week, and the whole area is unrecognisable from when I gave birth to my daughter there in a very old, outdated ward. The new infrastructure will provide much-needed modern facilities and clinical space to improve care for everyone, and it will interconnect with the refurbished existing hospital.

In September we opened the next phase of majors and resus as part of refurbishing the emergency department. This has seen the space in the old A&E transformed; we have doubled the number of bays, improved and upgraded “fit to sit” space and created a new ambulance assessment area. We will be opening two new wards this winter, providing new facilities for gastroenterology and colorectal services, and providing more joined-up and improved services between surgical and rehabilitation teams, often out in community hospitals. Following the delivery of a modular ward unit by the treatment centre entrance, on 8 December we will celebrate a new acute ward with 56 additional beds, which will have a major impact on flow out of the emergency department. That will be felt in shorter waiting times.

Since the first phase of improvements took place, the impact on our hospital has already been significant. Waiting times are down, and we have moved up more than 20 places from the bottom of the league tables. Staff morale is climbing and recruitment is buoyant. I am so proud of our hard-working NHS staff and, in particular, the hospital transformation programme led by Matt Neal and our new chief executive, Jo Williams.

I am incredibly grateful for the support of the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England, whose investment is not just saving lives but improving lives across my constituency and beyond into Wales. I hope the Minister will visit the hospital to see it for herself when the project is completed. I have every confidence that the work to improve the Royal Shrewsbury will continue to transform the hospital, our community and health outcomes for all our residents. It is right that a major hospital serving cross-border communities be prioritised for investment in this way.