Wes Streeting must not ditch desperately-needed Airedale Hospital rebuild: Andrew Brown

Yet not every decision made by the outgoing government was ideologically driven nonsense.

Some decisions were the product of unavoidable necessity. Delay and dither whilst sensible decisions are put under review isn’t helpful.

Consider, for example, the situation of hospitals that were built with RAAC concrete. That cheap and shoddy building material isn’t going to stop crumbling just because a Minister wants to take time to conduct a review.

Airedale hospital near Keighley is a case in point. It serves a huge part of Yorkshire with people travelling from way up in the Dales to get treated there. Back in the 1960s, when most of it was built, a decision was taken to save a little money by using the innovative technique of re-enforced autoclaved aerated concrete.

The long term consequences of that short sightedness have provided incredibly costly. The hospital got landed with a crumbling building which is proving seriously difficult to keep upright and watertight. There are metal props holding the ceiling up in several parts of the hospital and wards have had to be evacuated as worrying cracks have appeared in the ceilings.

Back in the 1960s the expected lifespan of the buildings they put up was 30 years. Even if the materials used had been of good quality it would have been very challenging to keep them running for decades longer than was planned. Since they were shoddy and badly constructed the only practical option is to undertake a complete rebuild.

So it was a huge relief to many local people when the new build was included in pre-election announcements by the last government. Much was made of the importance of this decision during the General Election and it was one of the big reasons why the local Conservative MP Robbie Moore bucked the national trend and hung on to a highly marginal seat.

Unfortunately, the announcement that Airedale would get a new hospital hadn’t been accompanied by much in the way of firm financial allocations. There was no completed design for the new build, no reasonably accurate costings had been done, and there was an astonishing lack of clarity over where the money was coming from. In short there was little more than a politician’s promise.

It is therefore small wonder that the new Minister was irritated to discover the money didn’t seem to be there to back up the rhetoric. Yet it is really important that Wes Streeting resists any temptation to remove the reward handed out by the last government to a Conservative MP sitting in a marginal seat.

The need for a replacement hospital is just too urgent. There simply isn’t the luxury of time to explore options. There is a real risk of the hospital failing to function before the building is completed.

When work began on designs and plans for the delivery of a new hospital for Airedale it was quickly realised that the best possible timescale for delivery was that it might open in 2030. Managers have been working flat out on the practicalities of trying to keep the place functioning until then but there are no certainties.

Faced with the realities of crumbling buildings that have been pressed into service for twice their expected lifetime it isn’t realistic for the new government to expect to find a solution that cuts corners. Either there is a new hospital built in time or the old ones faces full or partial closure. A scaled-down project, a bit of bodging and a lot of Ministerial spin simply can’t address the scale of the challenge. Sometimes there really is no choice. Public buildings that have reached the end of their lifespan need to be replaced.

Curiously there is one building that is operated by Airedale Hospital Trust that is in a reasonable state of repair. It opened in 1932. The facilities are outdated, the corridors and staircases are incredibly difficult to navigate, and it leaks energy like there is no tomorrow, but it was built using reliable materials and built to last.

Back in the 1970s when the idea was put forward in some committee backroom to save a bit of money by doing a bodged job on the main Airedale hospital I suspect the politicians and Treasury officials jumped at the chance to save the public purse some money. That decision has now come back to haunt us. Do we really want to repeat the mistake of building badly for short term political expediency?

It remains to be seen whether the new Minister has the vision to provide the people of Keighley and the Dales with a good quality facility that will last. Or whether he will ignore local needs and indulge in a bit of political point scoring as he delays and scales down an essential project for the local community because it helped a Conservative MP retain a seat in the General Election.​​​​​​

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire