£409m pledged to rebuild Scotland’s hospitals

NICOLA Sturgeon has promised state-of-the-art hospitals and health centres will emerge from a £409 million public-private funding package.

An artist's impression of phase one of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. Picture: submitted

The Royal Edinburgh Hospital campus will be the main beneficiary with £120 million to complete its redevelopment, the First Minister-in-waiting has announced.

Other projects include £90 million to develop Aberdeen Women’s Hospital; £20 million for the new Aberdeen Cancer Centre; £65 million East Lothian Community Hospital; £20 million community health projects in Highland including Skye, Lochalsh, south west Ross-shire and in Badenoch and Strathspey; £19 million for primary care in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and; £19 primary care projects in Grampian including Newmachar, Balmedie Blackburn and Elsick.

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They will be funded through the Scottish Government’s non-profit distributing (NPD) model, a form of public-private partnership which caps private sector returns with any surplus directed to the public sector rather than shareholders.

Ms Sturgeon said: “These health projects will provide state-of-the-art facilities to care for thousands of patients across Scotland.

“This £409 million investment will deliver the highest quality of health and social care services. This government’s vision is to deliver world-leading safe, effective and person-centred healthcare.

“Today’s announcement demonstrates that, despite the massive cuts to Scotland’s capital budget from Westminster, the Scottish Government will continue to deliver substantial investment in the infrastructure of the NHS through use of the innovative NPD model and the Hub programme.

“Infrastructure investment is also fundamental to delivering sustainable economic growth. It supports our construction industry and helps attract business activity to our communities.

“That is why we recently announced, as part of the draft budget, a £1 billion extension to the NPD pipeline extention to 2019-20.”

Barry White, chief executive of the Scottish Futures Trust which developed NPD for the government, said: “This massive investment in healthcare will deliver first-class, well designed buildings to support local healthcare and create thousands of jobs across Scotland.

“The SFT-managed £3.5 billion NPD programme stands as one of the largest infrastructure investment programme of its type across Europe.”

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