Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average amount of capital funding provided by his Department was for each new hospital built in the last five years.

Specific national capital funding is allocated by the Department for the building of new hospitals through the New Hospital Programme (NHP).

The capital funding provided to build a new hospital varies significantly between each individual hospital. Hospitals are built based on local requirements and vary in the scope of services that they provide and their size.

For the hospitals built as part of the NHP in the last five years, the average amount of capital funding provided by the Department was approximately £270 million per hospital. This average includes a significant range.

In addition to funding delivered through the NHP, in the last five years national capital funding has been provided for several other estates and upgrade schemes outside the scope of the NHP, some of which have delivered major new facilities, but which fall short of the definition of a new hospital.

As set out in the published NHP Plan for Implementation, the cost estimates for the new hospital schemes in Waves 1, 2, and 3 are expected to be higher. We are backing this plan with investment which will increase to up to £15 billion over each consecutive five-year wave, averaging approximately £3 billion a year.