Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the (a) transparency and (b) consistency of site selection processes used under the New Hospital Programme for Frimley Park Hospital.

I can confirm that since August 2024, the New Hospital Programme (NHP) has been supporting the trust with their site selection process to ensure it is transparent and robust. This has included broadening search criteria and “blind scoring” of sites to establish a short-list of options for further consideration. No decision has yet been made on the location of the new Frimley Park Hospital, part of Wave 1 of the NHP. Any final decision on location will require a business case to be assured and approved through the standard business case process.

Following Government guidance, all trusts are required to undertake appropriate levels of due diligence on potential sites as part of a site selection process. The selection process is designed to allow trusts to identify a smaller number of sites to investigate further and therefore it is expected that trusts will complete additional work on short-listed sites as part of the business case process to assess infrastructure deliverability including transport, utilities, and access.