WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO HEMEL’S £51 MILLION?

There’s mystery over the fate of £51 million earmarked for developing Hemel Hempstead Hospital.

Just two years ago, in May 2022, West Herts NHS Trust agreed plans to spend that amount on Hemel Hospital – and over £1.1bn on the Watford General rebuild.

The Hemel Hospital plans would have seen new diagnostic facilities and a new urgent treatment centre at the Verulam Building.

Now the favoured way forward is a Health Campus which would bring  these hospital services together with other NHS facilities in a major rationalisation on the former Market Square. One aim is to help regenerate the town centre.

But ‘commercial confidentiality’ may block the public from knowing how much might be spent on the new building.

This retreat from openness would be a change of policy on the part of the West Herts Trust, which gave very detailed figures for costs of redevelopments in a Trust Board paper in May 2022. The figures also show that the Trust expected to make £10m from land sales at Hemel Hospital.

Unless these figures are updated, the public will not be able to know which of the various proposals for health and hospital services in Hemel is best. 

The May 2022 cost figures are in the screenshot below, which is taken from the published Board papers for that month. ‘WGH’ is Watford General, ‘HHH’ is Hemel Hempstead Hospital and ‘SACH’ is St Albans City Hospital