Airedale Hospital rebuild funding confirmation is to be welcomed but work needs to be carried out swiftly

But the confirmation of funding for the rebuild is a positive step. Money, or a lack of it, is usually the barrier to delivering infrastructure for Northern communities.

The rebuild of Airedale Hospital is not a nice to have, rather a necessary project that should be treated with utmost importance.

The hospital is in a poor state with 83 per cent of the building constructed of Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC). It is an issue that cannot go unremediated.

The rebuild, which has had hundreds of millions of pounds allocated to it, will start between 2027 or 2028 with hopes that it will be completed by 2030. The pressing need to rebuild the hospital is underlined by the fact that by 2030 parts of the building will be unusable as a result of the risk posed by the crumbling concrete.

The Government needs to ensure that the rebuild is not only delivered but that it is completed on time.

The public has grown wary of promises made by previous governments.

In 2019, the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to build 40 “new” hospitals which he claimed would be completed before 2030. One of these “new” hospitals was Airedale.

While the costs are understandably high, the Government should view projects such as this as an economic opportunity.