Carillion’s collapse delays hospital opening by three years
Smethwick’s new 670 bed Midlands Met Hospital should have opened in October 2018, but the fall out from the collapse of Carillion means that the opening may now be delayed until 2022.
Work on the hospital stalled in January this year and it is feared that parts will have to be re-built causing added costs and further delays.
The chief executive of Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, Toby Lewis, thinks that unless the building is weather proofed by the winter time, costs will inevitably rise.
Lewis said: ” We need to get people on the site ,reducing the deteriorating of the site with the weather and preventing us having to rebuild parts of the two thirds built hospital. We need to agree with the government and others how best we can do that.”
In March a new contractor should have been appointed to complete the job, but that plan stalled as well and added to the already severe delays in completing the construction.
The local MP, John Spellar added: ” The delay is causing a great deal of disruption to two other local hospitals and delaying improvements to the area, as the new hospital will of course see new jobs and housing arrive in the region , to the benefit of not only people in my constituency , but north of Birmingham too. I have raised this matter with the government multiple times. It needs to cut to the chase to make a decision on the future of the hospital to get things moving at the site again.”
The department of health has said that: ” The government is working to minimise the impact and discussions with the Trust and PFI company are ongoing to ensure there are plans in place to keep any construction delays to a minimum.”
