Wycombe MP in talks for hospital improvements

Emma Reynolds has held talks with Wycombe Hospital bosses over the future of the site and its huge maintenance backlog.

The Labour MP for Wycombe visited the hospital last month for a meeting with Neil Macdonald, the chief executive of Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust.

Ms Reynolds told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “The future of the Wycombe hospital’s tower and the cost of its maintenance is raised with me frequently by constituents.”

The MP said she was ‘very pleased’ to meet again with Mr Macdonald and was ‘encouraged’ by the Trust’s plans to develop the hospital.

The politician said she ‘offered her support’ to the Trust and added: “It is crucial that we don’t lose any additional services from our hospital.”

During the general election campaign, the MP said she supported the Trust’s plans to move services from out of the hospital’s 1960s tower into a new building.

The eight-storey block, which houses cardiac and intensive care units and operating theatres, has been in ‘poor condition’ for years and will eventually be demolished.

The building, which is home to ‘infrastructure critical to the running of the hospital’, has a list of repair jobs worth £80 million, according to the Trust.

This maintenance backlog accounts for most of the £100 million worth of outstanding repairs at the whole Wycombe Hospital site.

Among the recent issues were the tower’s cracking concrete columns, water leaks from blocked guttering and faulty cladding panels.

Earlier this year, the Trust said 114 of the tower’s 316 panels had been stripped off ‘as a precautionary measure for health and safety’ to stop them falling on people.

This week, Neil Macdonald said people would be aware of ‘the ongoing challenges’ faced by the Trust in supporting both patients and staff with modern healthcare buildings in Wycombe.

He said: “The challenges of the old tower and the millions of pounds we spend annually on its upkeep could be much better invested in new and modern facilities.

“Even with the current age of the estate, we are one of a handful of accredited elective surgical centres in the region, and we are one of the top performers nationally on productivity.”

The health boss said it was ‘great’ to meet Ms Reynolds to ‘outline the Trust’s plans for the future development’ of Wycombe Hospital and to secure her support and assistance.

Last week, the MP was asked about the hospital potentially getting some of the £1.5 billion set aside for surgical hubs, which was outlined in the Autumn Budget by the Chancellor Rachel Reeves.

Asked if Wycombe would get some of the cash, she said: “I will be pushing for that, but I can’t give you an answer now.”