Airedale Hospital: Patients at new £1bn Yorkshire hospital to get en-suite rooms

NHS chiefs say they hope work can start on the redevelopment of Airedale Hospital near Keighley in 2028/29.

Members of North Yorkshire Council’s Skipton and Ripon area committee were given an update on the project on Thursday (Mar 5).

Eleanor Nossiter, head of communications and engagement at Airedale NHS Foundation Trust, said urgent work was taking place on the designs for the new hospital.

She added: “We’re hoping for a start date in 28/29. I’m saying ‘hoping’ because as part of the national program, we’re being scheduled a bit like a flight decker who’s going when because they’ve got 16 hospitals in the first wave, so we’re just waiting for confirmation about the moment.”

The NHS officer said it was now planned to build the hospital in one go rather than two parts as had previously been planned.

She added: “The original thought was if we could do it in two parts to help us maintain the services in the existing hospital while that happened, but we’re now looking at how we could make it happen even quicker by doing it in a single build.

“In order to start work in 28/29 it will mean we need our outline planning application to go in this summer.”

The meeting heard that a planning application had been submitted for the new multi-storey car park and a new electricity substation was due to be built.

Ms Nossiter added: “Probably the next things that people will see happening on site is that we’ve got to drop the overhead power lines.

“These are all not the most exciting things, and the things that will cause disruption unfortunately in terms of parking, although will be managed mainly through staff parking, but it is very much necessary work and we really hope it gives people assurance that the hospital is coming.”

Councillors were told that a modular system would be used to build the new hospital, with parts built elsewhere and then brought to the site.

Freya Sledding, clinical director of the new hospital programme at the NHS trust, said the new hospital would be a 100 per cent single-room facility.

She added: “This is the direction of travel both nationally and internationally that’s shown to enhance patient experience and recovery, it’s shown to improve infection control and decrease of hospital acquired infections.”

Councillor Andy Brown expressed concerns that patients in single rooms could become isolated and lose out on the community aspect of multi-bed wards.

Ms Sledding said there were also concerns that around “deconditioning” particularly with older people who may not walk around hospitals as much with a single room.

But she added: “We’ve done some work around that, around trying to mitigate the downsides of single rooms and maximising the upsides of the single room.”