North Manchester General Hospital bosses have issued an update on the rebuild of the Victorian-era facility – set to be the ‘most significant investment in the north west’ in the next decade in health care
New CGI views of what the new North Manchester General Hospital could look like(Image: MFT)
North Manchester General Hospital bosses have issued an update on the rebuild of the Victorian-era facility after years of waiting for the go-ahead from government.
In January last year, the hospital was told by the government it would finally fund the former workhouse’s long-awaited transformation. Health Secretary Wes Streeting told the House of Commons the crumbling Crumpsall estate would be awarded between £1bn to £1.5bn in funding.
That funding was formally approved by the government, giving ‘financial certainty’ to plans for a new state-of-the-art facility. And, in a board meeting of Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) this week, bosses gave an update on the progress of plans.
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They told of how ‘work is progressing on the refresh of the business case, with work to describe the rooms required in the new hospital, their quantity and size complete. Once agreed with the national team, work on the design of the buildings can proceed’.
The hospital trust is working with the government’s New Hospitals Programme (NHP) team, which has awarded the billion-pound fund. And works have started on-site to prepare the ground for the new hospital development.
But the NHP team ‘always seems to be challenging’ the trust, board members raised as a concern as they asked the most senior chiefs on Wednesday (January 28): “When are we going to get to the point we say, ‘this is the plan’.”
Chair of the trust, Kathy Cowell CBE, responded “that’s a hot topic,” before the chief finance officer, Claire Wilson, said: “There is a huge amount of work that we do in parallel and in lockstep with the New Hospitals Programme.”
The chief finance officer explained that the trust has worked on ‘demand and capacity modelling’, to make sure both the government and the trust have the ‘same assumptions’ about the level of demand on the hospital over time.
“That gets locked down, then we move onto the schedule of accommodation,” she continued. “That is likely to be locked down by the end of this week.
“That describes the size of the footprint that we will need going up. They are constantly challenging us, and we are challenging ourselves, on the level of transformation, and reflections, and alternative service redevelopment that we need to ensure are in the scope and scale of our own build so we’re not building something that isn’t fit for the future.”
CGIs of the new North Manchester General were released last year(Image: MFT)
The trust is expecting to have ‘an estimate of the overall size of the footprint, a schedule of accommodation’ soon, with a meeting at the end of February where the government signs off. After that, the trust can ‘start to design the whole thing and set up the business case from April onwards’.
Ms Wilson said: “We’re getting close. There is a pressure on the cost. One of the things that we have done, both ourselves and by NHP, is been challenged on that all the way through.
“So now a common set of assumptions as to what size hospital we need and how much of that is new build, how much of that is redevelopment or refurbishment of our existing estate. We’re really challenging if we’re getting the absolute best value for the patient and the public pound.”
The Crumpsall estate will at last be given its much-needed transformation(Image: MFT)
The trust’s chief executive, Mark Cubbon, added that this will be the most significant investment in the region, amid the government’s ‘10-Year Health Plan’. The plan sets out three key ‘shifts’: moving care from hospitals to communities, shifting from analogue to digital, and pivoting from sickness treatment to prevention.
Mr Cubbon told the meeting: “The conversations [with the New Hospitals Programme] have been really constructive. There’s movement in both directions where we see an opportunity. At the end of the day, all we’re trying to do is get the greatest value for money for the taxpayer and get a fantastic facility.
“I think it’s quite right that we’re being challenged, and we’re challenging ourselves. If you think about the 10-Year Plan, it’s a completely different model of care to the one we have today. There’s three shifts, and this is going to be the most significant investment in the north west in the lifespan of the 10-Year Plan.”
Mr Cubbon called the project a big ‘responsibility’ but an ‘exciting opportunity’. He added: “How are we building a hospital that’s digital-first in terms of how the whole thing operates for the future?
“It’s a lot of responsibility… we’re trying to go as quickly as we can to get the business case right, but also making sure that the assumptions that underpin the shift in the model of care are as right as we can get them.
“Because nowhere in the country has designed a new hospital with the new goals of care in the 10-year health plan. That’s why it’s really exciting, but I think as we go through the different stages, we should make sure that we’re getting the checks and balances right – for ourselves as much as for the NHP.”
Artist impressions of what the rebuild could look like(Image: MFT)
The 2025 announcement said that work on the new north Manchester hospital would start as early as 2027, in the first wave of the new hospital projects being given money by the government.
The funding followed a major Manchester Evening News campaign to rebuild the failing structure, which was built in the 1870s. We urged the government to commit to funding a once-in-a-generation opportunity to create a hospital that will save lives, fit for the next 150 years.
North Manchester General Hospital is in a state of such disrepair it has been described by some as akin to a ’19th century workhouse’. Staff report daily issues caused by the ageing estate, with operating theatres being forced to close because of crumbling ceilings.
The full plans would see the crumbling hospital estate transformed into a state-of-the-art facility as well as regenerating this part of the city, including desperately-needed new housing.
The new hospital will be constructed on a different area of the Crumpsall site to the old estate, rather than the buildings being knocked down and started again from scratch. That means North Manchester General will not have to close as it is being transformed and there will not be an impact on patient capacity or care.