NHS Scotland: Why the future of five delayed treatment centres will now not be known until December

Patients will have to wait another six months to find out the future of five delayed NHS treatment centres.

The Scottish Government said the proposals to open five new national treatment centres will now not be revealed until its 2026/27 Budget is set out in December.

The decision has been branded “not good enough” by opposition parties, amid calls to also fast-track other major health projects such as the replacement for Edinburgh’s Princess Alexandra Eye Pavilion.

Plans to open national treatment centres in Livingston, Perth, Aberdeen, Ayr and Cumbernauld were put on hold in February last year due to funding problems.

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The Government previously said it would set out its new plans for these centres after the Chancellor’s Spending Review, which took place earlier this month.

Ministers had hoped the network of treatment centres would help tackle the growing backlog of operations. There are 559,742 people waiting for a new outpatient appointment in Scotland, with some waiting more than two years.

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First Minister John Swinney has pledged to bring waiting lists down by providing an extra 150,000 appointments.

Originally the network of national treatment centres was due to carry out 40,000 additional procedures, including elective surgeries and diagnostics, by 2026.

Four of these centres have already been opened in Clydebank, Kirkcaldy, Inverness and Larbert.

However, the Larbert centre at the Forth Valley Royal Hospital is only partially opened. The further five proposed sites have now been further delayed despite £34 million having already been spent on them.

A Scottish Government spokesperson said it was spending more than £1 billion on capital investments in the health service this year and had committed to progressing work on one of the five unbuilt national treatment centres, as well as replacing the Princess Alexandra Eye Pavilion in Edinburgh.

The spokesperson said: “As part of our own Scottish spending review, we are undertaking a full review of our capital spending to prioritise the available funding towards projects that drive progress against our priorities.

“We will provide clarity over which projects and programmes will receive funding in the medium term when we publish our new infrastructure pipeline, alongside the 2026/27 Budget and Scottish spending review.

“The publication of the new pipeline will put our capital budget back on a sustainable trajectory.”

Brian Whittle, the Scottish Conservatives’ public health spokesman, said: “The failure to get these centres up and running is piling more pressure on Scotland’s NHS, which is in a state of permanent crisis after 18 years of SNP mismanagement.

Brian Whittle MSP

“This is yet another broken promise from the SNP when it comes to the health service. They must urgently explain why they won’t be in a position until the end of the year to say if these centres will go ahead or not.

“If they are to be paused even further or mothballed, then the consequences will be devastating for the patients left languishing on waiting lists under the SNP.”

Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s health spokeswoman, added: “National treatment centres were central to the SNP’s plans to reduce waiting lists, but they can’t even give us a straight answer on whether they will go ahead. Scottish patients cannot keep paying the price for SNP incompetence.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and health spokesperson Alex Cole-Hamilton said of the delay: “That’s not good enough. I want to see these centres delivered in towns and cities which are too often forgotten by the SNP.”