Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to allocate targeted capital funding to ensure that (a) maternity and (b) neonatal services can operate in (i) safe and (ii) fit-for-purpose buildings.

We recognise that maintaining and repairing our healthcare estate is a vital part of the Government’s ambition to create a National Health Service that is fit for purpose.

As a first step towards improving our maternity and neonatal estate, we are investing £131 million through the 2025/26 Estates Safety Fund to address critical safety risks on the maternity estate, enabling safety and better care for mothers and their newborns. The funded works will delivery vital safety improvements, enhance patient and staff environments, and support NHS productivity by reducing disruptions across NHS clinical services. The Government is also backing the NHS with over £4 billion in operational capital in 2025/26, enabling systems to allocate funding to maternity and neonatal services where this is a local priority.

In addition, £30 billion will be invested over the next five years in day-to-day maintenance and repair of the NHS estate, with over £5 billion specifically allocated to address the most critical building repairs, reducing the most serious and critical infrastructure risk in a targeted way.