Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what mechanisms are in place to ensure (a) local community and (b) patient engagement in the (i) design and (ii) delivery of new NHS hospital infrastructure.

Hospital 2.0 is the New Hospital Programme’s (NHP) approach to standardising the design for future hospitals and has been designed and developed with people with lived and learnt experiences throughout the stages of the design process, from strategic outline business cases, early plans to commissioning, and full operationalisation. Stakeholders include National Health Service staff, NHS trusts, royal colleges, patients, and the public, as well as the supply chain. Over 1,300 clinicians, over 400 patients and lived experience partners, and 57 architects and designers have worked alongside subject matter experts to feed into the design process. This is to ensure that new hospitals will meet current and future healthcare needs, and that patients and staff are at the heart of its designs.

The NHP works collaboratively with NHS England and trusts to ensure that the design of each hospital is right-sized for local circumstances and tailored to the needs of the local community.

The NHP is currently embarking on another cycle of formal engagement workshops with key national stakeholders to showcase the current progress of Hospital 2.0 designs, with a workshop focussed on the patient and public perspectives.

Outside the NHP, the majority of investment in new hospital infrastructure relates to works on part of a site or to renovation and maintenance, and so is subject to local design considerations. When healthcare services are relocated to a new site a formal process of consultation is followed.

At a local level, integrated care boards are responsible for strategic infrastructure planning, managing the budget, and allocating funding according to local priorities in their area. Local systems have also developed infrastructure strategies to create a long-term plan for future estate requirements and investment for each local area and its needs.