Plans for a new hospital in Carmarthenshire have been on the table for years but no land has been purchased and no funding secured. So what is happening with healthcare in west Wales?
16:32, 15 Aug 2025Updated 16:55, 15 Aug 2025
Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen, which opened in the 1940s. Ambitious plans to downgrade it and build a new hospital in Carmarthenshire have seemingly been put on ice(Image: Western Mail)
Health bosses have admitted they may never be able to afford a new hospital in west Wales almost 20 years after the ambitious plans were first proposed.
The idea of constructing a new ‘super-hospital’ in the region was first discussed back in 2006 and in 2018 Hywel Dda University Health Board, which is responsible for healthcare provision across Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire, and Ceredigion, officially unveiled its proposals to build the new urgent and planned care hospital to the west of Carmarthen in an area near St Clears or Whitland.
The project was estimated to cost more than £1bn in total and would result in the downgrading of Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen and Withybush Hospital in Haverfordwest. Stay informed on Carms news by signing up to our newsletter here.
The A&E departments at both of those existing hospitals would be shut down with a new A&E department being housed at the new site – around nine miles from Carmarthen and around 25 miles from Llanelli.
We are now seven years on from the launch of the official plans and yet the beginning of construction has never seemed further away. A long list of potential sites for the new hospital was whittled down to three and then two – agricultural land forming part of Ty Newydd Farm on the outskirts of Whitland and a site located less than a mile to the west of St Clears.
But two years on from that decision no land has been purchased. Furthermore no funding has been secured to purchase any land.
There is scepticism among some members of staff at Glangwili Hospital – a sense that plans for a new hospital have been shelved entirely due to a lack of funds, rendering something once seen as ambitious now impossible.
These concerns are amplified by continuing issues at existing Hywel Dda hospitals. At Glangwili parking continues to prove challenging for staff and visitors alike while multiple-hour waits at A&E have become common. Outside emergency ambulances have lined up with patients onboard, creating a backlog of sick people in need of a hospital bed and a shortage of available vehicles able to attend emergencies just a few miles away.
Last year a rugby player was forced to lay injured on a cold and wet pitch because it took six hours for an ambulance to arrive in the village of Nantgaredig – five miles from the hospital.
Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen, which has been in operation for more than 75 years (Image: Mike Walters)
Further east at Llanelli’s Prince Philip Hospital things have looked similarly bleak. Locals have protested at the health board’s controversial decision to close down a 24-hour minor injuries unit – a service it was promised would be maintained when the A&E department bit the dust around a decade ago.
The closing down of the 24-hour minor injuries unit – which was reduced to 12 hours between 8am and 8pm – was only meant to be a six-month temporary measure. However the service will not return to what it once was, it has been confirmed. Instead four options for the unit’s future have been put forward with a decision expected next month.
Meanwhile a ward at the Llanelli hospital was told at the end of last year it needed to make several improvements following a surprise inspection. In a report Healthcare Inspectorate Wales highlighted fire doors being wedged open, cluttered areas near fire exits, and broken handrails at Bryngolau Ward. The report also recommended a full review of the audit and risk management procedures.
In Pembrokeshire local MS Paul Davies said earlier this summer “enough is enough” regarding uncertainty over Haverfordwest’s Withybush Hospital. This was following the initiation of a public consultation – which runs until the end of August – looking at possible changes to care provision including the transfer of patients requiring specialist critical care to Glangwili, which is more than 30 miles away.
Protesters outside Prince Philip Hospital in Llanelli last year (Image: John Myers)
It all paints an uncertain picture for the future of healthcare provision in west Wales and with no new hospital in sight – despite one initially being slated for a 2029 opening – that picture is unlikely to become any clearer in the coming years.
The health board keeps using the word “if” with regards to the new build. Last year the board’s chief executive, Phil Kloer, said: “A new hospital is going to be at least 10 years and maybe longer in arriving”.
Nine months later nothing has happened.
“In February 2022 we submitted a Programme Business Case to the Welsh Government, which estimated costs for a new urgent and planned care hospital and other essential building work in excess of £1bn,” said the health board’s medical director Mark Henwood.
“This represents a significant affordability challenge for the Welsh Government and we are still working through how we might achieve this and in what timeframe.
“In November 2024 the board discussed how we estimated that delivery of a new hospital, if achieved, is likely to be at least 10 years. Major projects such as this take many years to develop and we continue to work with the Welsh Government on the way forward.”
The health board has now said it needs to figure out ways to “support fragile services” in existing hospitals and is asking members of the public to contribute to a review of its A Healthier Mid and West Wales strategy, first published in 2018.
Mr Henwood added: “In accepting that a new hospital will not be operational in the near future we need to consider how we support fragile services ahead of a new facility and within existing hospital buildings. The Clinical Services Plan consultation considers nine healthcare services that are at risk of being able to continue to offer safe, quality services or timely care in the coming years.
“Additionally we are reviewing our 2018 strategy, also discussed as part of our board meetings in public, and we are asking our population to let us know what they think is important to them to lead a healthy life.”
A spokesman for the Welsh Government said: “Large infrastructure projects take time to develop and in the meantime we continue to work with Hywel Dda on service options and ongoing investment requirements across their estate. Future investments will be informed by the work on a clinical services plan that will build on the strengths of each site within Hywel Dda’s clinical estate.”