VIDEO: Bristol superhospital to cost £430 million

The cost of Bristol's new superhospital has risen by more than £50 million to £430 million, it has been revealed.

A firm called Carillion has been announced as the contractor which will build the new Southmead Hospital. On Tuesday the firm said that the hospital would have 800 beds, of which three-quarters will be in individual rooms.

It will also have 2,700 car parking spaces, split over two multi-storey car parks.

But it also emerged that the total building cost has risen to £430 million. Five years ago, when the superhospital plan was first put together, the bill was estimated at £374 million.

And Carillion said it did not have the money in place, but was looking for investors.

Once the money is in place, the plan has to be approved by the Government, and then a planning application can be formally submitted to Bristol City Council.

Carillion will work with North Bristol NHS Trust on the designs for the super hospital which is expected to be ready to take its first patients in four years.

The trust said hospital features include a helipad and better facilities for cyclists, and that it intended to recruit 85 per cent of staff from the local area.

Trust chief executive Sonia Mills said: “This is an important and exciting stage in the process and means that we can now move to final consideration of the contract and, subject to final approvals, construction work can begin in earnest at the site later this year."

Trust medical director Martin Morse said: “This represents a major step on the path towards provision of improved healthcare, not only for the people of Bristol and South Gloucestershire, but for all those throughout the South-West and from further afield who look to Bristol for their healthcare."

Carillion chief executive, John McDonough, said: “We look forward to working with the trust to deliver this state-of-the-art hospital, which will transform acute healthcare for people in the Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire areas.

"Health is a key sector for Carillion and the new hospital is our seventeenth PPP hospital, further enhancing Carillion’s position as a leader in the sector."

Ever since Southmead was chosen as the site for the hospital, people in South Gloucestershire have fought against the plans, which will also mean Frenchay being downgraded to a community hospital and a new independent sector treatment centre being built in Emersons Green.

More than 50,000 people signed a petition opposing the plans and a legal challenge was mounted by members of the Save Frenchay Hospital Group to the building of the private treatment centre.

Northavon MP Steve Webb, who has long campaigned for Frenchay to be the new super hospital site, said choosing Southmead would prove to be a costly mistake.

He said: "Our local hospitals certainly need modernising, but choosing Southmead for the new super hospital site risks being a multi-million pound mistake.

"If we are to have just two hospitals to serve the whole of Bristol and South Gloucestershire, and one is in the centre of Bristol, it makes no sense for the other to be just a few miles up the road also in Bristol.

"The decision to shut Frenchay always seemed like a bad one, but with government plans for more than 30,000 new homes in South Gloucestershire, that decision now looks a whole lot worse.

"Thousands of the new homes are to be built to the east of Bristol, almost on the doorstep of Frenchay, while thousands more are planned for areas such as Yate where people will have to drive past Frenchay to get to Southmead. In an emergency, those vital minutes could make the difference between life and death.

"I am also concerned that the Government is pressing ahead with using the discredited PFI method to finance the new hospital.

"Private contractors have made a fortune while the taxpayer has had very poor value for money on many of these schemes. Given that the Government can borrow money much more cheaply that the private sector - who are having trouble borrowing money at all - why should we pay over-the-odds for a privately funded project?

"This is money that should have been spent on healthcare, not on inflated borrowing costs."